WTF? Have you never met a kid in your life? Kids are stupid, their brains are still developing. You can't just reason with them, explain that the thing they want is stupid and that they should actually want something else. It gets worse with teenagers, they think they are actually smart and stop listening while thinking that every choice they make will have a huge impact on their entire life. Telling them to "suck it up and find some other friends" has to be the most pointless thing you can do.
Look, I hate kids, don't have any and never will but even I understand how fucked up it has to be for your kid to be excluded from activities because they don't have a phone or have the wrong one. Being a parent now has to really suck. All kids bond over things that are bad for them (social media) so you pretty much have to choose how do you prefer to hurt your kid: by giving them a phone or by making them an outcast.
What is that even supposed to mean? He has to prove that his actions where justified. How is his a no-win situation? Is his plan to first argue that he's innocent because he wasn't trained correctly and acted out of fear and then claim in the second case that he actually received proper training?