Why pay $250 for being innocent of any crime?

Post below taken from Riehl World. See the original for links

I blogged on this back in July when it first made some news:

Messrs Mashburn and Cornelison are pupils at Patton Middle School. They were arrested in February after being observed in the vestibule, swatting girls on the butt. Butt-swatting had apparently become a form of greeting at the school - like "a handshake we do," as one female student put it. On "Slap Butt Fridays," boys and girls would hail each other with a cheery application of manual friction to the posterior, akin to a Masonic greeting.

The charges have been dropped, but not without a caveat. I don't quite understand why, if the girls asked for the charges to be dropped, they were each due $250? If they were violated in some way, there should be charges. If they were not, there shouldn't be. But simply putting a price on it? Was this a vocational school by any chance? ; )

The News-Register newspaper of McMinnville reported that a "civil compromise" reached by prosecutors and the defense called for both boys to apologize, to pay each of the four girls $250 and to complete a "boundaries education" program.

Four girls listed as victims by the prosecutors had asked the judge to drop the charges against Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison. Yamhill County Judge John Collins did so on Monday, saying it was in the "interest of justice."

A number of young girls were in the courtroom during the hearing. They included at least some of the four who asked that the charges be dropped, attorneys said. During the brief hearing, the two boys faced the girls and apologized. "I never intended to hurt you in any way," Mashburn said. Cornelison told the girls: "I hope we can still be friends."

They were originally charged with felony and misdemeanor sex abuse charges in February. Amid growing public opposition to sending the boys to prison and putting them on a sex offenders' registry, prosecutors dropped the felony sex abuse charges and added misdemeanor harassment charges, then later dropped all sex abuse charges, leaving only the harassment counts.

The judge dismissed the final charges following negotiations between prosecutors and the defense, and discussions with the four girls about whether they wanted the case dismissed.