(JTA) — A 13-year-old boy who allegedly drew a swastika on a Boston-area school football field will not face criminal charges.
The teen, an eighth-grader at the Georgetown Middle/High School, dragged his feet on the field’s artificial grass on April 28 in order to create the anti-Semitic symbol, the Boston Globe reported Monday, citing a joint statement from the Georgetown Police Department and the Georgetown Public Schools.
The teen did not “grasp the depth of what he had done and the underlying meaning of a swastika,” the statement said.
“The discovery of a swastika on school grounds, regardless of the intent or ignorance behind it, is deeply disturbing and is indicative of a need for us to reflect, as a school community, on how we approach values and diversity,” Georgetown Schools Superintendent Carol Jacobs said in the statement. “As a result, we have worked with the police, community leaders and religious clergy to come up with a plan of action.”
A public forum to discuss “diversity and acceptance” is scheduled to be held at the school on Thursday.
Two other students were found responsible for offensive drawings made at the school on the same day.
All three students were punished by the school, according to the statement.
The eighth-grader could be required to complete community service with a local synagogue and to receive education from the Jewish community, police said in the statement.
Georgetown, a distant suburb of Boston, is a nearly all-white town of some 8,000 people.
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