The Lafourche Parish School Board is coming under fire for how it handled an incident in which a group of boys shared AI nude images of female classmates. One of them had been expelled for hitting a boy on a school bus who had shared an image of her. Her family’s lawyers gave the school board an earful this month. Benjamin Comeaux told the board her school, Sixth Ward Middle School in Thibodaux, prevented her from seeking help.
“These students teased her all day. And she said, ‘Let me call my dad.’ ‘We don’t need to get parents involved right now,’ is what she was told,” Comeaux said.
Another of the family’s lawyers, Gregory Miller, told the board after the girl’s pleas to the school for help fell on deaf ears, she was placed on the same bus as one of the boys who had been bullying her, and that’s when she took matters into her own hands.
“And I got to punish them because they took action after the same videos and images were being shown on the bus again of her? Are you guys okay with that?” Miller asked.
Miller told the school board that it had punished the wrong person.
“She is the victim, and now you expel her. And now her grades have plummeted. You took that from her,” Miller said.
The girl’s father, who Louisiana Radio Network is not naming, told the board that his daughter went through depression so severe that he had to hire a counselor, and that her punishment was way overboard given the circumstances.
“What she did was wrong, I have no doubt in my mind. But expulsion was greatly extreme for a little girl who has never been in trouble in her life,” the father said.
The board eventually reduced the girl’s expulsion to a suspension in the length that she had already spent out of the classroom and allowed her to immediately return. The Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office has charged one boy for sharing those images, and more charges are likely.
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