- A 15-year-old girl was suspended from
school after the male classmate she accused ofsexual assault was charged with sexual battery. - Officials forced her to attend a training called "Sexual Harassment is Preventable," WBTV reported.
Officials at a high school in
The teenager told Hawthorne Academy High School officials that the classmate had inappropriately touched her in the bathroom. In response, school administrators reported the claim to police but also accused the student of filing a false report and suspended her from class, WBTV reported.
Meanwhile, the local police department investigated the incident and the male classmate now faces charges against a minor for sexual battery, according to WBTV.
Neither the school nor the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department immediately responded to Insider's request for comment.
In an interview with WBTV, the girl said the male student had continuously harassed her until one day his behavior escalated.
"He would, like, come into the bathroom and he would push me into the stall," the girl said. "He put his hands in my pants and then he was like touching my breasts."
The girl's mother told WBTV that the school conducted its own investigation and found "no evidence" that supported her daughter's sexual assault claim.
School administrators told the mom that they'd "give her a day of suspension."
"I asked the principal, I said, 'Well, if the police are telling me that he did do these things, he admitted to them, and that I have the right to press charges, you're telling me this didn't happen?'" the mother told WBTV.
The principal, in reply, allegedly told the mother that the police have "nothing to do with" any decisions from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, the district to which Hawthorne Academy belongs.
The principal also told the mother that there's "nothing else that we can do about this,'" WBTV reported.
School officials also forced the 15-year-old to attend a training called "Sexual Harassment is Preventable," according to WBTV.
"They are making her feel like she is being punished for coming forward," the mother said.
"That scares me because she told me how hard it was for her to come out and tell this story to me to the school, to the police," she added, according to the local outlet.