Better late than never.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The boys apologized, the girls accepted and the charges were dismissed. That wasn't so hard, now was it?

Too bad such clarity and common sense took the slow train to McMinnnville in a case that has given the community national notoriety for draconian school discipline.

For six months, Patton Middle School students Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison have lived under the threat of grave legal consequences for their boneheaded decision to run down the hallway swatting girls' buttocks. The boys were arrested last February and charged by Yamhill County District Attorney Bradley Berry with 10 counts of felony sexual abuse and harassment.

They were hauled away in handcuffs and incarcerated for five days. Upon release, the boys were suspended from school and forbidden to contact their friends. The charges carried up to a year in jail for each count and required mandatory registration as sex offenders.

After the story gained traction on national news and talk radio shows, outrage at the disciplinary overkill mounted. Berry reduced the felonies to misdemeanors, but he insisted that the case proceed to trial.

A modicum of sense emerged in August when Berry and the deputy district attorney prosecuting the case, Debra Markham, agreed to drop the sex abuse charges. But the misdemeanor harassment charges remained, along with the prosecutors' determination to take the case to trial.

On Monday, Circuit Judge John Collins threw out all charges after both the defense and prosecution requested that the case be dismissed. Cory and Ryan finally were able to walk out of the courtroom and away from the specter of a potentially life-changing criminal record.

There's no question the boys deserved to experience serious consequences for their misbehavior. After the spanking incident was reported, a subsequent investigation revealed that the boys also had poked or touched two girls on their breasts. Parents, and their daughters, have every right to expect school officials to deal with such incidents swiftly and seriously, and for consquiences to provide a meaningful deterrent to repeat offenses.

A range of possible sanctions could have been applied to the behavior. School officials were right to suspend the boys. As was demonstrated in court on Monday, formal apologies are powerful and should be mandatory. Counseling, community service, attending mandatory sexual harassment prevention seminars and any number of other interventions could have offered an opportunity to help Ryan and Cory understand why what they did was wrong.

But this was never an appropriate case for the criminal justice system. What needs to happen now is a thorough analysis by Patton Middle School officials and Yamhill County prosecutors of how they allowed themselves to convince each other that Cory and Ryan were criminals rather than just two impulsive adolescent boys who acted out inappropriately.

Berry has promised a full review of his handling of the prosecution, but his statements throughout the case reflect a stubborn unwillingness to admit that any mistakes have been made. It would be tragic if two 13-year-old boys are the only people made wiser by this experience.