What in the world is wrong with the people who run public schools and the systems they in which they reside? Do they consider the messages they’re sending to students and parents when they make decisions based solely on trying to preserve what little integrity these schools and the people that run them still have at this point? Obviously not.
Hawthorne Academy High School in Charlotte, N.C. suspended a 15-year-old female student in late October for a day and required her to attend a class called, “Sexual Harassment is Preventable” after she reported being sexually assaulted by a male classmate, according to WBTV.
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CPMD) found that there was enough validity and evidence to the female student’s claims that they pressed charges against the male student.
Even with CMPD pressing charges against the suspect, the school told the mother of the victim that “there’s no evidence” in this case, accused the girl of “filing a false report” and subsequently suspended her.
According to WBTV, the mother of the victim told the outlet the following about a conversation she had with the school:
“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,’ the mother said.
“We’re going to have to give her a day of suspension, and you know, 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.’”
That’ll make any parent’s blood boil. Heck, that kind of response — taking into account that the police filed charges and that the suspect admitted to the claim against him — should make anyone’s blood boil.
In response to the news that the school punished a sexual assault victim for lying — when all indications in this case say she didn’t — students of the school staged a walkout on Wednesday in support of the victim, their disgust to the school’s response to the case and sexual assault not being taken seriously in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.
The people who made the decision to punish the victim in this case should do the same that those school board members in Loudoun County, Virginia who covered up sexual assault should do — resign.
For local coverage of both this story and the walkout that followed, watch below: