Handbook for Parenting???

You ever feel like you never know what the right thing to do is? Not talking about the choice between right and wrong, I mean the right thing whatever that is........We live in a small hick town and have for the past 4 years, well it has taken us a couple of those years to establish ourselves in the community......Booster member, teammate, classmate, friend, coach.......Well there is a tradition in this town that every year during PLanters day the little 8th graders get initiated.........my initiation was embarrassing and normal.....this is a whole different world to that! The boys get whacked with a 2x4 5 times on the butt, and let me tell you that this is not a normal whack this is a full force running start whack that causes dark black and blue bruises...The boys know that it is coming and usually volunteer to have it done, they say "let's just get it over with!" As a parent I knew that this was going to happen to my 14 yr old son, but also knew that there was nothing I could have done about it besides locking my son in the house for the next week or so. Usually it is upperclassman friends of theirs that take care of the whacking......My son and some friends where approached at the fair and asked if they wanted to get it over with and 2 of them agreed, my son and a friend. They went to the one kids house, and let me just say that I know that that kids mother was home at the time, and commenced to whack the boys over the butt with a 2x4. They took it like men! After they left the house they went back to the fair and let my husband know what had just happened.....Not it a scared way, just a "hey dad I just got initiated and it wasn't so bad". My husband did not react in any way and made sure the boys were ok. They were and they took off to continue with the fair......Later that night we find out that the boys were at another friends house (understand that this boy did NOT get a whack) and they were making comments about the whole ordeal and making light of it when the dad of the friend heard them and forced them to tell him what happened and show him their butts. He freaks out and makes them tell him who had done this to them. Well the boys don't want to rat out a friend, so he tells them that if they don't tell him that he is going to take them down to the police station and make them get it out of him.......So my son tells him, again thinking that the dad is going to be cool about the whole thing.....NO he freaks and gets on the phone a proceeds to call the parent of the main boy, which happens to be a High School teacher and Head Basketball coaches son!!! Cussing him out about his son and that he better do something about this whole thing. Well needless to say we have been getting phone calls from several parents saying that we need to do something about this so that it doesnt go on any more.......Where I am thinking that I don't want my son to be the poster child for the whole saving the community thing! I know how the kids can be, I know that now he is going to be ridiculed and treated like crap from all the upperclassmen. When he didn't want for any of this to happen.....He just wants it to all go away. Well the parents and the boy who did it came by our house last night to appologize to us and our son and to let us know that their son is being punished to the extreme and that when school does start he will also be suspened for 3 days along with the other boy involved. Unfortunatly the other boy is not going to be punished because his mother was there and she does not think that what they did was wrong, shes a loser as well as her son.....Back to the parents that stopped by, they were extremely sorry and shocked that this happened, that they thought that it was over when their son had the same thing done to him 2 years ago.....We are very sad about the whole thing and hope that our son doesnt get punished, so we let them know that this is not what our son wanted to happen and that he had nothing to do with telling on them. That we also appreciate their concern. I personally want this all to go away, I dont like conflict and I know that now everyone in town knows and are going to be asking all kinds of questions and I work with the wife of the dad that made all the phone calls........Nice huh!!!!