Middle school girl harassed after reporting sex assault, Title IX complaint says

A 14-year-old was sexually harassed until she withdrew from Cherokee County Schools in North Carolina, according to a Title IX complaint under investigation.

Classmates called Riley a slut and a whore as she walked through the halls of Andrews Middle School in fall 2021, after she told police and school officials that a high school football player had sexually assaulted her, according to a federal complaint.

False rumors spread that Riley, then 14, an eighth grade cheerleader, was pregnant, and some classmates said she had “come on to” the 16-year-old football player, according to a letter Riley’s lawyer sent last year as part of a federal Title IX complaint against Cherokee County Schools in western North Carolina.

And even more troubling, rumors spread that the football player had recorded an intimate video of Riley, which she feared was circulating among her classmates, her complaint states. 

This video may or may not have existed. NBC News has not seen it, nor spoken to anyone who saw it firsthand. The rumors about the video were the subject of official probes, and one middle school student told administrators that he had seen it. Yet the football player denied making a video, and the district later concluded that “the preponderance of the evidence shows a video did not exist,” a conclusion Riley’s lawyer tried to get the district to reverse. Prosecutors filed a charge against the football player related to the video but later dropped it.

Riley and her mother said they expected school staff to curb the harassment and stop the rumored spread of a video. Instead, Riley’s Title IX complaint alleges a cascading series of failures by teachers, coaches, counselors and administrators who ultimately left Riley on her own, forcing her to quit a sport she loved and withdraw from school. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sexual-harassment-complaint-cherokee-county-north-carolina-rcna61303


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Updated: 1 year ago
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