So those students should also be provided with a key if these bathrooms are going to be locked….???! No excuse is going to absolve them of responsibility for this boy’s safety.

The fact that, as you say, adults are consistently looking to brush aside the terror he must have felt in that bathroom stall is bad enough, to then attempt to turn the whole situation round and victim blame, assert that he shouldn’t have been in there anyway… that disgusts me so much I’m sick to my stomach. Yet it’s not even unusual or unexpected to find someone reacting like that is it? That fills me with despair for our childrens’ future — and I mean all of our children, because (unlike LGBTQ+ people) transphobes/homophobes/bigots and the like are not born, they are made. They are conditioned by family, by society, to hate. That’s not good for them either is it. Though I make no excuses for students who behave like this, they absolutely deserve punishment, to be held accountable, I am making the case that they too have been victims because of the way they have been raised. This is the whole scope of this tragedy.