Mom Takes Matters Into Her Own Hands After School’s Response To Her 9yo Daughter Being Bullied
A schoolyard bully in Alabama allegedly attacked a 9-year-old girl, leaving her with a concussion, two black eyes and a face full of bruises. School officials insisted that the girl wasn’t bullied, but instead received the injuries from a fall.
Alabama mother Kelly Turpin received a phone call Feb. 3 from her daughter’s school informing her that her 9-year-old needed to be picked up.
“I got called to come to the school around 10 a.m. Friday,” she told Alabama.com. “They told me my daughter fell and I needed to come to the school.”
However, once she arrived at the school, her daughter, Lanny, told her that she didn’t fall and was actually attacked by a fellow classmate.
Reportedly, Lanny was walking to art class with a group of friends when another girl grabbed and jumped on top of her. Lanny fell down and her head hit a metal pole, causing a concussion.
The bully reportedly did not want Lanny to be friends with another person. After the attack, the child asked Lanny to keep quiet, saying: “I’m so sorry. Don’t tell anybody I did it.”
While Lanny was upfront about the nature of her injuries, the school nurse had a different story, calling the girl’s bruised face “an accident.”
“The nurse started telling me my daughter fell and was hurt accidentally,” Turpin told Alabama.com. “But my daughter said ‘No mom,’ it wasn’t an accident.'”
Turpin rushed her daughter to the local hospital and the girl received a CT scan. While she is expected to make a full recovery, Turpin doesn’t want her daughter’s story to be forgotten.
Posting photos of her daughter’s injuries online, Turpin wrote that Lanny “was being nice to a mentally challenged child and the other girl didn’t like it,” according to the Daily Mail.
When she asked the principal about the bully’s punishment, he said that “she would be suspended for two days … [but] then I found out they didn’t even do anything to her.”
This is not an isolated incident, according to Turpin.
“Other mothers are in the same situation,” she told Alabama.com. “And we went through this before with my older child. Nothing has changed when we’ve gone to the school about the bullying. I just want them safe at school.”
Turpin plans to start homeschooling her daughter because she feels that the school district isn’t doing enough to stop bullying. Principal Tony Willis said he could not comment on the issue or confirm whether the bully received punishment.
“We’ve been instructed we’re not to comment on this situation because the family has been speaking to an attorney,” Willis said. “With any incident, we’re going to look into it and follow our code of conduct to the letter. We try to be proactive rather than reactive and make sure students are comfortable enough to talk with us when they encounter problems.”
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