A 12-year-old girl says three of her male classmates at a Virginia private school pinned her down and cut her dreadlocks, calling her hair “ugly” and “nappy.”
The group of white sixth-grade boys ambushed Amari Allen during recess Monday, as she was about to use the slide on the playground at the Immanuel Christian School in Fairfax, Virginia, local outlets reported.
“They said my hair was nappy and I was ugly,” Allen, who is African American, told News4.
One of the boys covered Allen’s mouth and another held her hands behind her back, while the third cut her dreadlocks with a pair of scissors, she said.
“They kept laughing and calling me names,” Allen told WUSA9. “They called me ‘ugly,’ [and] said I shouldn’t have been born.”
When the bell rang, “they ran off laughing, and I was just sitting there,” the girl added, in tears.
The horrifying ordeal lasted about five minutes, Allen said. It’s unclear where school staff was at the time.
The same three classmates have bullied Allen in the past, stealing her lunch and calling her names, she said.
The preteen — a straight-A student and violin player — didn’t tell her family what happened until Wednesday, when her grandmother, Cynthia Allen, noticed her granddaughter’s hair was shorter.
“It’s very painful,” Cynthia Allen said. “I want to see them dismissed from the school. I want to see something done.”
The girl’s grandfather, Dewaune Allen, said his heart broke when he heard about the trauma his granddaughter went through.
“I was just paralyzed,” he said. “I couldn’t get myself together.”
The family met with school administrators on Thursday morning to address the disturbing incident. They’ve also reported it to Fairfax County Police.
Head of School Stephen Danish said administrators were “deeply disturbed by the allegations” and that the school would be investigating.
“We take seriously the emotional and physical well-being of all our students, and have a zero-tolerance policy for any kind of bullying or abuse,” he said in a statement.
Second lady Karen Pence in January began teaching art at the evangelical Christian school two days a week after previously working there for 12 years.
The school came under fire for banning gay and transgender students — and requiring job applicants to pledge that marriage is only between a man and a woman.
Source: Read Full Article