The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Chief Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net

EDUCATION officials are working with the Attorney General’s Office to create “peculiar offences” for assaults on school campuses, Education Minister Glenys Hanna Martin said yesterday, as the brutal iron-bar attack on a Grand Bahama principal renews calls for tougher consequences.

Speaking to reporters in Grand Bahama, Mrs Hanna-Martin said the aim is to treat campus assaults as aggravated offences, carrying stiffer penalties than similar attacks elsewhere.

“We want to make sure a signal is sent that if you think you can come onto a campus and do foolishness, you will find out there will be a repercussion of a very serious nature, and so we're working with the Attorney General's office to seek an aggravated offense where the assault happens on the school campus,” she said. “You have assault, but when it's on the school campus, it has an aggravated impact in terms of sentencing and the severity of the offense.”

Her comments came in the wake of a 30-month prison sentence handed down to Kenneth Farrington, who attacked McLean’s Town School principal Simone Butler-Cornish with an iron bar in her classroom last June.

Mrs Butler-Cornish was retrieving a student’s report card for Farrington when he launched the assault. She later ran outside and pretended to be dead, trying to make him stop.

Both Mrs Butler-Cornish and her colleagues said the sentence should have been harsher, pointing to the severity of the attack and Farrington’s prior convictions for similar offences. Mrs Hanna-Martin did not comment on the specific sentence, but said such attacks must carry serious repercussions.

Asked whether Mrs Butler-Cornish would be reassigned, Mrs Hanna-Martin said the decision would rest with the principal.

She said the government wants school campuses to be safe, unassailable spaces.