She was the youngest of her siblings. Junior high school was difficult for her. Groups of girls disliked her and began teasing and name calling, which she ignored. Then the girls broke into her school locker and destroyed the project that was due that day. The principal became involved and when he questioned the three girls they admitted breaking off the lock, destroying the project, and ripping up her school books. The principal asked them over and over if there was anything that my daughter did to provoke this, and each girl said, no, they just didn't like her.
When she was in ninth grade she began a different school, the local high school. A couple months into the ninth grade, someone from the school office called me at work to tell me that my daughter had been in an altercation at school and I needed to come to the school to get her. I was not told she was hurt. Work and the school were close so I was at the school in a few minutes. My daughter was sitting in a chair at the school office. Her clothes were torn and bloody. She had trouble talking. At that moment I was only interested in how hurt she was and I could pretty well tell her nose was broken so I took her to the hospital. Other than some cuts and lots of bruising, including bruised kidneys, the broken nose was the only thing that needed to be repaired. She spent a couple days in the hospital and more pain than she wanted to endure, but the nose was finally back to normal and after a couple weeks she looked like she always did.
The day after the "altercation" I called the principal of the high school. He told me that whenever students are in any type of altercation, all the students involved are sent home from school for three days, and her position of freshman class student body president was taken away from her, permanently. I asked him if he had investigated this "altercation" enough to know that my daughter was attacked and not in any way part of a fight like he was saying. He said there was no need to investigate, that the girls told him that my daughter had been calling one of the girls a racial slur, and they got into a fight. He said "You need to teach your daughter not to call people names so they won't get into fights with her." I told him he just said the wrong thing to the wrong parent, and I hung up. Anyone who knew me or my kids would know it could not be true that one of my kids would call someone a name much less a racial slur.
I called the local police and asked them to meet me at my house where my daughter was and take a statement. The police took our statement and then they visited the school. The principal of the school called me to tell me they would not allow the police on the school grounds and that the security office of the high school would handle their own investigation. He was very upset I had involved the police. Too bad.
So I spent the next couple days at the school. Doing my own investigating. I spent time in the girls locker room in the gym. And I sat down on the bench over the blood stains in the concrete and looked up at the blood spurts in the ceiling tiles. And I cried for what I was finding out about what happened. A very big girl who was in the twelfth grade called me at home to tell me she was so sorry. She had been told that my daughter had been harassing a ninth grade girl she knew and she was asked to help them get my daughter back. She walked up behind my daughter and grabbed her arms and held her so that two girls could beat on her. She told me that she had since learned that my daughter really did not even know those girls. And she was willing to go to the principal.
It is tough being a single mother, working and not available for every school activity that are almost always held while daytime working parents have to be at their jobs. I was missing some days of work and invoking the wrath of my boss in order to do what the high school would not do. In order to save face, the principal had ordered the teachers of the classes held when my daughter was hurt to write statements and in the statements they were told to lie. All this came out later. You see, when I visited the girls locker room in the gym, the teachers lounge room in the locker room was pointed out to me. The window shades were down. There were no openings. Maybe there were curtains on the inside too, because I walked all around that room trying to see inside and I couldn't. That meant the teachers could not see out into the open area that they were supposed to be supervising. It frightened me to think that some other girl could be hurt possibly worse than my daughter and the teachers wouldn't see it happening either. Several girls stated that the teachers go into that room each class and they don't supervise the area. That is why the girls planned their attack in that room right after gym class. In the sworn statements by the teachers, they were instructed to say the blinds were up and one teacher was in the room.
To make a long story short, after I contacted the school board and I also found a lawyer to contact the school board, the principal was transferred to a different school, the blinds in the teachers room were removed, my daughters blood stains were removed as much as possible. The "altercation" took place right in front of the closed windows of the teachers room.
By that time my daughter did not want to be reinstated as freshman class president; she liked the girl who had been given the job and didn't think it was fair to just take it back. The girl who started the whole thing had been in trouble in school most of her life and was actually on probation. The principal kept that information from me but I could understand the right to privacy of other students and would not have expected him to tell me. I actually felt sorry for that little girl. She had a worse family situation than my daughter did and she didn't have anyone sticking up for her. I have to be honest, at first as the true story emerged, I despised that girl. I saw her once at a school football game because someone pointed her out to me. She walked down the bleacher steps and sat right behind my daughter. My son was varsity quarterback and we attended every home game and my daughter would sit with her friends in the front row of the bleachers. I overreacted. I practically climbed over the people in my row to get to the stairs and I ran down to get my daughter.
What did happen to my daughter was her dislike for school. She quit school within a year. She moved to her father and stepmother's place in a different state. She became a problem there and they told her to leave. She moved in with a woman and her daughter who none of us knew. It was a scary time for me as her mom but she was in contact with me by phone often. After a couple years living away from me my daughter moved back and got her GED and plenty of jobs. She is an interesting person and I know I will write more posts about her. There are many things I admire about her.
