He sure does, but he does not have the CAPACITY to say no. Someone could point a loaded gun to my head & demand that I do something & I still would not.
But I have been trained for these situations.
A 15 yr old kid? Easy manipulated by an adult.
Legally, he (arguably) has the ability to understand this. If this were a criminal case, he might have an uphill battle. As it is NOT a criminal matter, if this was a medical issue, then the school might be capable of consenting to treatment on the parents' behalf.
The question I would have: what efforts did they make to contact the parents?
If the parents choose to make an issue out of this, they can certainly ask that question. I would hope, though, that they are not going to castigate the school for looking after the health and welfare of their child (assuming there was some basis to believe that medical aid was necessary ... and given the fact he was apparently transported by ambulance, I would assume that this was the case).
Clearly they did try & did reach the parent(s) ... did they take the kid to the clinic and then call?
Maybe.
This situation stinks to high heaven.
Maybe. But, what motivation might the school have aside from the health of the child? There may have been some missteps, but I don't think there is any grand conspiracy to abuse or violate the kid. Such a plot would require not only two or more school staffers conspiring together, but also the medics falsifying information to justify a transport to the hospital. What are the odds of all that happening?
"he admitted to smoking earlier in the week?" give me 20 minutes and he would tell me anything I wanted him to say..that he killed Abe Lincoln...
Let's see ... the guy I talked to tonight that was higher than a kite admitted to using dope two years ago ... it was actually more like two hours before the contact.
In this instance these were school staffers, not cops. They did not apparently get an admission about anything else, much less anything criminal.
Coercive threats, pain application etc will work most of the time with untrained people -- they'll tell you anything you want.
Okay, these were school teachers, not the rogues at Abu Ghraib. Tone it back a little.