Last week an incident occurred at a Jeddah Saudi school that should send chills up the spine of every parent. In a chain of events, a young boy needlessly died and no one was held accountable.

At a school a bully was picking on a child when the victim’s older cousin intervened in an attempt to protect him. The older, bigger boy struck the cousin on the head and the boy fell back and hit his head, seriously getting injured. The classroom’s regular teacher was absent that day and no substitute teacher was in the classroom to supervise the students.

It appears that school administrators did little to aid the injured boy. The family arrived, but no ambulance was called. A teacher volunteered to take the child to the hospital, but instead of driving 300 meters to a private hospital, he drove a long distance to a government facility. It turns out the boy had a pre-existing medical condition, and as a result of the blow to his head, he died.

Whatever could go wrong at the school during this emergency did:

• A classroom full of students was unsupervised, allowing children to be victimized by other students.

• No school administrator called an ambulance and paramedics to aid the child.

• The teacher who volunteered to transport the child to the hospital mistakenly believed that the private hospital would not take the child without payment. This is contrary to the stated policy drafted by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah that all private hospitals must treat emergency cases at the expense of the government.

• The cause of death was determined to be of natural causes, ignoring the fact that the blow to the head precipitated the boy’s death. In most countries this would be manslaughter.

• The bully who attacked the boy was not held responsible for the death because the cause of death was deemed natural.

• School administrators were not held accountable for permitting a classroom to get out of control, leading to the death of a child.

As we have seen on countless occasions, particularly the recent tragedy involving the deaths of a father and son who fell into an open sewer manhole, individuals in a position of authority continue to escape accountability for their negligence.

It’s as if they find novel ways to explain away that negligence. As for the open sewer hole, municipality officials asserted that the sewer manhole was the responsibility of a private business. As for the school death, administrators escaped responsibility by rationalizing the death was due to natural causes. Even the attacker gets off scot-free, escaping a life lesson that one must be held accountable for his actions. Now the bully can pursue his aggressive behavior without a thought to the consequences.

Unfortunately, individuals in positions of authority who continue to avoid accountability contribute to the destabilization of our society by eroding Saudis’ trust in institutions that are actually charged with our care and safety — as in a school environment.

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