Parents at NYC school say teens in forcible touching football hazing had to be punished but not arrested

The teenagers charged with forcible touching in a locker-room hazing incident need to learn a lesson — but having them busted and sent to court took it too far, school parents said. “They got arrested for that?” one parent at James Madison High School in Brooklyn told The Post on Tuesday.“They’re not supposed to be arrested for that.

They could be disciplined, but not arrested.“I think it’s too much,” he said.

“Nobody was hurt, nobody was sodomized.It’s something that boys do, that athletes do in the locker room.”The three teens were arraigned in Brooklyn Family Court on forcible touching and unlawful imprisonment charges on Friday, two days after they allegedly held down the 14-year-old victim, took off his pants and twice struck the boy’s penis, according to authorities.

The incident forced the team to cancel its season and allegedly cost one coach his job.Yet, the father of one of the accused teens told The Post this week that the incident was nothing more than “horseplay,” and said the hazing ritual was just “pantsing” and done to several players.Most parents interviewed outside the Midwood campus on Tuesday seemed to agree.“I don’t think it needs to go that far,” another parent said.“But there should be some type of discipline.

I definitely believe it was horseplaying….But clearly there’s an issue going on.”Pierre Renold, whose son is a sophomore at the school, said it should have been deal with in house.“We have to find out exactly what going on because we don’t want these three guys to have bad records,” he said.

“When you take it to court, if the judge finds you are wrong, you have a bad record.The school should have dealt with it.

It shouldn’t have gone to court.“Later on a bad record will affect them, like going to college.

It wasn’t serious enough for the court to get involved, it’s something the school could’ve handled,” he said.But not all parents interviewed agreed — some said...