After six-year-old first grader Johnathan Prevette was caught kissing a girl on the cheek, he was suspended for a day from Southwestern Elementary School in Lexington, North Carolina, for sexual harassment. As school district spokeswoman Jane Martin commented, "A six-year-old kissing another six-year-old is inappropriate behavior. Unwelcome is unwelcome at any age." Confronted with a hailstorm of criticism and negative publicity, school officials soon backpedaled, arguing that the boy was punished under "the general school rule which prohibits unwarranted and unwelcome touching of one student by another." But Johnathan insisted that the girl, whose name was not disclosed, requested the peck.

Ten days later, De'Andre Dearinge, a seven-year-old New York City boy was suspended for five days as a sexual harasser for kissing a classmate because "I like her" and then impulsively pulling a button off her skirt. When asked about the button, the boy alluded to Corduroy, the bear with the missing button in the famous children's story. School officials later knocked two days off the boy's sentence after it became clear that he had no idea what sex was.

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