At a time when a hushed-up sexual assault at a public school appears to have played a role in a gubernatorial-election upset in Virginia, a school in North Carolina appears to be doing something similar.
A parent is disillusioned after her 15-year-old sophomore daughter was suspended from Hawthorne Academy High School in Charlotte, having reported being sexually assaulted by a male classmate in a bathroom. This was after police actually pressed charges against the minor boy who was allegedly involved.
It was school officials who alerted police to the report. The Charlotte-Mecklinburg Police Department investigated and ultimately pressed charges, a CMPD spokesman confirmed.
Still, administrators at the school accused the female student of filing a false report and suspended her. The girl’s mother called local WBTV news, and the resulting investigation has looked into the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district’s handling of reported sexual assaults.
“He would, like, come into the bathroom and he would push me into the stall,” the girl said of her alleged assailant. “He put his hands in my pants and then he was like touching my breasts.”
The girl said the physical assault came after sexual harassment on a near-daily basis. The news outlet did not identify her or her mother.
Asked by the press what was going through her mind when she heard there was “no evidence” of an assault and that her daughter would be suspended, the mother said: “I really just thought I had faith in CMS, that they were going to do right by my daughter.”
The school is also reportedly making the student attend a class called “Sexual Harassment is Preventable.”
WBTV asked to interview Superintendent Earnest Winston and the CMS School Board, also reaching out to Hawthorne Academy Principal Diann Weston, but multiple emails went unanswered.
A spokesman for Winston would not schedule a time for an interview nor respond to emailed questions about the situation at Hawthorne.
Superintendent should be fired immediately.