The family of a Detroit 8th-grader who was filmed being brutally beaten in a school bathroom says they are outraged by the way the school handled the situation, which reportedly happened on several occasions.
In a game called "30 seconds," one girl beats another while peers time and film the brawl at Ludington Middle School. One 13-year-old student, Jasmine Crawley, was one of the victims, and her family tells WJBK-TV that while school administrators knew about the "game," they chose to turn a blind eye. Comments like "Snitches get stitches" on her Facebook page reportedly threaten her for going public.
"They felt like because this was a game, nobody got in trouble, not the people instigating, not the people that were fighting," Crawley's sister Arletha Newby told WJBK-TV.
In the video, bystanding students' voices are audible, "It's 12 seconds," one student says, "It's 28, oh y'all are done, oh it's 30."
Crawley escaped the assault with a few scratches and broken glasses.
The family members have filed a formal complaint with Detroit Police and are calling on Detroit Public Schools to take action -- even if a solution means Crawley will be disciplined as well. A DPS spokesperson tells the station that Ludington will investigate the complaint.
In recent months, beatings of students caught on tape have led to several harassment investigations across the country. A phone-filmed video went viral in October after a bystanding student filmed one boy waiting inside a classroom for 15-year-old Zachary, a gay student at Union-Scioto High School in Ohio, just so he can beat Zachary to the ground.
The victim's family suspects the incident was motivated by the student's sexual orientation, and was outraged when the school ignored the situation, then told Zachary to "tone yourself down," WBNS reported.
Last month, the parents of a 17-year-old Indiana high school student filed suit against their son's school district for failing to protect their child, David Osama Haddad, from bullying and beatings. They claimed that the harassment was motivated by Haddad's Middle Eastern ethnicity, and students often called him a "terrorist."
After being beaten and bullied repeatedly, Haddad was forced to seek medical treatment for suffering a traumatic brain injury.
"The principal [Robert McDermott] turned a blind eye to the repeated bullying and harassment of this student," the Haddad family's attorney Kenneth Allen said in a statement last month. "The principal was notified on several occasions of the situation, but did nothing. Inaction by those in charge in the face of injustice cannot be tolerated."