A family in West Virginia has filed a lawsuit against the Mount Hope Middle School after their 13-year-old daughter was allegedly gang raped after school. They claim the brutal assault would not have happened had the staff not been so rigid with school rules.
The girl, indentified only by the initials B.E., claims that the Fayette County school board, the state Department of Education and school officials did not provide enough supervision around the school, the Charleston Gazette reported.
According to court documents, the girl had to stay after school to collect uniforms for her school cheerleading squad from the coach, Linda Nevi.
Nevi allegedly took longer than anticipated to gather the uniforms, which forced the girl to miss her regular school bus.
After realizing this, B.E. went to the school's office and asked to use the school phone to call her parents and secure a ride home. School employees in the office allegedly refused her request, so she went outside the gymnasium to use a friend's cell phone. B.E. called her parents from the borrowed phone to tell them she would ride home with her friend's parents when they came to pick him up after basketball practice.
Hoping to wait in the office, the girl went back to the room to find it closed, and the staff gone.
After returning to the gymnasium to wait inside for her ride, Bo Morrison, the basketball coach, allegedly told the girl that she was not allowed to wait inside during practice.
From here, the lawsuit's descriptions takes a terrifying turn:
"While sitting outside the gymnasium, Plaintiff B.E. was confronted by various male Mount Hope High School student athletes; The student athletes forced Plaintiff B.E. to a room commonly used by students at Mount Hope High School to engage in sexual acts; In this room, the student athletes raped and physically and sexually assaulted Plaintiff B.E. while another female juvenile was present."
When the assault ended, B.E. returned to the gymnasium with the female juvenile to wait for the friend she was originally going to ride home with and his parents.
The Courthouse News Service reports that B.E. has not been able to return to her classes due to the "threatening" and "humiliating" environment and has enrolled in another school district.
The family's lawsuit seeks a court order that would force the school to impose policies to protect students and "compensatory and punitive damages for negligent supervision, negligence, willful, wanton and reckless conduct, intentional and reckless infliction of emotional distress, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and violation of Title IX."
See the official court documents here: