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Giles defends report on Phila. school attacks

Retired federal judge James Giles, whose inquiry into the Dec. 3 violence at South Philadelphia High has been praised and pilloried, defended his report as "very accurate."

Retired federal judge James Giles, whose inquiry into the Dec. 3 violence at South Philadelphia High has been praised and pilloried, defended his report as "very accurate."

"The superintendent said to me, 'Try to find the truth of what happened,' " Giles said in a 90-minute interview Friday, his first on the matter. "I'm at peace with the work I produced."

Philadelphia School Superintendent Arlene Ackerman praised the report, calling it complete and fair. But Asian advocates and students derided it as incomplete and inaccurate.

One major criticism is that the report focuses on Dec. 2 and 3, ignoring what advocates say were years of attacks on Asian students.

"It was not my intention to write a report that was like a grand-jury investigation," Giles said. "If I'd had a few years, I could have done that, with an army of investigators.

Moreover, he said, he anticipated that more formal investigations would follow, by the state Human Relations Commission and by the Justice Department, which received a civil-rights complaint.

"Should the situation have been addressed years ago? I don't know. My gut reaction is, yes, every report of violence needs to be taken seriously. I don't know that it wasn't."

The report cites race as a factor in a daylong series of attacks on Asian youths, carried out by large groups of mostly African American students.

No one who was interviewed could identify any of the assailants, Giles said. And not every parent gave consent for his or her child to be interviewed.

"There are those who say Asians have been attacked all the time in school. I don't know," he said. "There are Asian students and black students who are the best of friends."

The fuel that motivates young people to strike their peers comes from their homes, their streets, and the media, he said. The challenge is how to make a school safe despite that.

He recommended that students meet with others of different races as freshmen to get to know one another.

In terms of the report, Giles said, "If I've left out something critically important, I apologize. It's not intentional. What I reflected is very accurate. Students who were attacked - everyone who did that, they need to be punished. That cannot be tolerated."