School Official Says Prior Bullying Wasn’t Due to ‘Meanness but More Out of a Desire for Sport’
A Waco, Texas Christian school is facing a $3 million dollar lawsuit alleging negligence, gross negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress following accusations that three white male students placed a rope around the neck of a 12-year old Black classmate before dragging her around.
Attorneys for the girl’s family, according to The Dallas Morning News, say that while on a camping trip with classmates from Live Oak Classical School, a mostly white Christian private school, three boys came up behind the girl, wrapped a pull rope from a nearby rope swing around her neck, and yanked her backwards off of her feet, leaving behind a serious rope burn from ear to ear.
The girl was treated with Vaseline and ibuprofen by a chaperone. No adults saw the incident take place, and the girl’s mother was not contacted by school officials.
“It looked like somebody had ripped her neck apart and stitched it back together,” the girl’s mother, Sandy Rougely, told The Dallas Morning News. Rougely only learned of the incident when her daughter got off the bus at the end of the trip. She believes the attack to be racially motivated, following months of bullying by the girl’s classmates.
School officials deny any wrongdoing, claiming that the injury was the result of a perfectly innocent accident, writing in an email to The Dallas Morning News that “the student and some of her classmates were playing with a swing and an attached pull-rope on a field trip. The student received first aid treatment immediately after the accident by a parent chaperone who is also a physician, and she was able to enjoy the remainder of the field trip, which lasted through the next day.”
They also disputed any racial motivation behind the incident, insisting that they had interviewed eyewitnesses and the students involved, and found no indication of harmful intent nor any evidence of a racial motivations.
Attorneys for Sandy Rougely and her daughter disagree, adding, “I don’t know how you can look at her neck, at the pictures and think this was anything but intentional.”
The mother says there was bullying prior to this incident. The Daily Beast reports the lawsuit alleges the child “encountered bullying at the school that was not disciplined.”
“This is not the first time this has happened,” the mother told Principal Allison Buras via email. “During the the Tempest play rehearsal he was pushing and kicking her in the line that they were in.”
Buras, according to court documents, says she addressed the incident with the student, and responded to the mother, “It sounds like he may have pushed on the back of her leg to make her leg buckle, which is something the kids sometimes do.”
“Rarely is that done out of meanness but more out of a desire for sport.â€
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