Authors back youth charged over school bombing story

By DAVID USBORNE Herald correspondent

NEW YORK - Leaders of Canada's literary community are rallying behind an Ontario youth who faces criminal charges stemming from a story he wrote for his drama class.

The story concerns a troubled youth who plots to blow up his school as revenge for being bullied.

The author, himself a victim of bullying, has not been named.

He was arrested in early December shortly after he had read the story in class and remained in prison for over a month, missing Christmas, the New Year as well as his 16th birthday. He is also accused of making death threats to fellow students.

Margaret Atwood, the winner of last year's Booker Prize, was among a handful of prominent writers and journalists who attended a forum in Ottawa on Monday to publicise the case. They also included Michael Ondaatje. The young author was also present.

Authorities in the United States and Canada remain super-sensitive to anything resembling a threat to commit acts of violence against schools. This is in the wake of the 1999 Columbine High School tragedy in Colorado, where two students went on a deadly rampage.

Canada's arts community has responded angrily, however, accusing prosecutors of violating the boy's right to free expression. "I see myself as someone who has been saved by writing," Ondaatje said. "God knows what I would have been, become, or how I would have ended up without it."

Atwood told the audience that the life of an adolescent "can be hell," because "you can have no power and you can have no recourse and you can have nobody who actually believes you."

Called Twisted, the seven-paragraph tale begins with the narrator describing a boy "who's been harassed and tortured his whole life." It concludes with the youth taking "13 packages of C-4 and a detonator" into school in a plot to blow it up, when "everybody would be having lunch and having fun."

"As far as I understand it, what precipitated the whole thing was the story," the youth's lawyer, Frank Horn, said. "That's what made people think all kinds of crazy stuff."

It is not clear, however, that the short story was all that precipitated the arrest of the youth. He is also accused of uttering several death threats shortly after writing his story.

His 14-year-old brother also spent nearly a month in custody after he similarly voiced death threats.

Members of the community where the boys live, near Cornwall, Ontario, have voiced strong support for the prosecutors' action. Some fellow students of the boy appeared at the forum and accused the media and the literary community of over-reacting to what happened and ignoring other factors, including the death threats.