Girl Forced to Apologize to Boy Who Raped Her

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A special ed girl in a Missouri middle school reported that she was raped a couple of years ago. But school officials insisted that her story was made up and badgered her into recanting:

Following instructions from the school, the girl wrote an apology to the boy she accused of raping her and had to personally give it to him, according to the lawsuit. She was then expelled for the remainder of the 2008-09 school year….The girl returned to the middle school for the 2009-10 school year and tried to avoid the boy, according to the lawsuit. It didn’t work. She was sexually assaulted again [in the school library] but didn’t tell anyone because she was afraid of being expelled again.

….School officials were notified of the incident and allegedly doubted the girl’s claim, saying they’d “already been through this,” according to the lawsuit. The girl was also examined and found to have been sexually assaulted. However, she was suspended from school for “disrespectful conduct” and “public display of affection,” her lawyers wrote in the lawsuit.

I’ll grant that it’s impossible to know for sure what happened based on just one side of the story. Still, a forensic exam after the second rape showed that the girl had indeed been sexually assaulted, a DNA match was made to the boy she had accused of raping her, and the boy then pleaded guilty to charges in juvenile court. But the school district continues to say that it bears no responsibility for any of this. WTF?

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

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So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

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