A high school student was punished by the Hawthorne Academy High School for reporting an experience of sexual assault.
The sophomore student approached school officials and revealed that she was sexually assaulted by a male classmate. But instead of taking her allegations seriously, the school wound up suspending her and said she has to sit through a class titled “Sexual Harassment is Preventable.”
When the 15-year-old girl approached higher-ups, she revealed that a male student in her class had been harassing her nearly every single day. The harassment eventually grew severe, and the girl finally came forward to report it.
“He would, like, come into the bathroom and he would push me into the stall,” the girl said. “He put his hands in my pants and then he was like touching my breasts.”
Once the incident was reported, officials got in touch with the local police, and this led to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department pressing charges against the boy for sexual battery. The 15-year-old girl’s mother also revealed that the boy admitted to having sexually assaulted the student in the bathroom.
Despite charges being pressed against the juvenile, the high school officials later suspended the 15-year-old girl and claimed she filed a false report. They then punished her by suspending the girl and making her attend a “Sexual Harassment is Preventable” class.
Outraged by the school’s reaction to the young girl’s sexual assault report, her mother said, “The school did their investigation, gave me a phone call, and said, ‘Hey, look, unfortunately, it looks like there’s no evidence that shows that what your daughter saying took place. We’re going to have to give her a day of suspension.'”
“…So then that I asked the principal, I said, ‘well if the police are telling me that he did do these things, he admitted to them, and that I have the right to press charges, you’re telling me this didn’t happen? And she said, ‘well, unfortunately, what the law does has nothing to do to do with CMS, so, unfortunately, we have nothing else that we can do about this,'” the mother went on to say.
As she spoke about the distressing phone conversation with the school, the mother added, “I really just thought I had faith in CMS, that they were going to do right by my daughter. So when I got that phone call I was hurt.”
WBTV’s Chief Investigative Reporter, Nick Ochsner, spoke with the mother and said: “CMS says they take sexual assaults seriously… They want students to report these instances. What would you say to that?”
“I would say that it’s a lie,” the mother responded. “They don’t. They don’t have your children’s back.”
“They are making her feel like she is being punished for coming forward,” added the 15-year-old girl’s mother.
The outcome of all this is young girls feeling like their plea for help may never be heard after experiencing sexual assault. It is hard enough to muster up the courage to come forward and report such incidents. Then seeing such instances be handled this way will only further discourage teenage girls.
“That scares me because she told me how hard it was for her to come out and tell this story to me to the school, to the police,” the girl’s mother said.