A shocking lawsuit this week alleges that officials at the Live Oak Classical School in Waco, Tx. looked the other way after three white boys put a rope around a 12-year-old black girl's neck and dragged her around.
WacoTrib.com reports that Levi McCathern, the attorney representing the girl's family, alleges that the girl was continuously bullied even as school officials downplayed her treatment. The $3 million lawsuit alleges negligence, gross negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress against the school.
The alleged incident took place during a school field trip to the Germer Ranch. The girl was watching some of her fellow students play on a rope swing when she suddenly felt a rope go around her neck. She subsequently slipped and fell to the ground while three white boys pulled on the rope, McCathern alleges.
“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.
For its part, the school has claimed that the entire incident was an accident and the boys were just being playful when they put a rope around the girl's neck. The Daily Beast flags some recently released emails between Sandy Rougely and school dean Allison Buras that show Buras tried really hard to downplay the seriousness of the incident.
"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," Buras wrote in one email. "Rarely is that done out of meanness but more out of a desire for sport."