Woman accuses the Lee County Board of Education of disregarding a sexual harassment claim.
/ Jessica Fairley
LEESBURG, GA. --
A case involving sexual advances through text messaging has two Lee County parents pointing the blame at each other and the school system.
Vanessa Washington approached the Lee County Board of Education Monday about an alleged sexual harassment case that involved her son. This is something she says school administrators wanted to sweep under the rug.
The incident happened on February 10th at Lee County Middle school. Washington says her son received vulgar and sexually explicit texted messages from another boy in his class.
“The school told us about the text messages they even confiscated our son's phone and pulled it up,” said Vanessa Washington.
She says this incident cause a short confrontation leading to both children being sent to In-School-Suspension (ISS). This is a move that the mother says Lee County administrators should not have made, as she believes her son was not in the wrong.
“We were just shocked at how they wanted to punish both children equally and just get over the situation,” said Washington.
She says school officials looked through her son and the other child’s phone and verified that the messages did come from the accused child. However, the mother of the child who's accused of sexual misconduct says Washington’s account is far from the truth.
“Based on the documentation form the cell phone records from my Verizon, there were no text sent from my child's phone on any of the morning that these texts were received by that student,” explained the mother of a child accused of sexual harassment.
Although she did not want to release her name due to privacy issues, she says this evidence should put an end to her child's suffering.
“He's catching a lot of grief at school. The kids are making fun at him, he's losing friends because of it and it's all based on just lies that are being spread about him,” said the woman.
Dr. Lawrence Walters, the Superintendent for the Lee County School System, says Washington had every right to approach the board but before anyone is punished guilt must be proven.
Washington says she only came before the board because they never fully resolved the issue. Since the incident, she has taken her son out of the Lee County School System and placed him in a private school.
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