A mother and her daughter say they’ve had enough of a school bully and a school district that’s not taking it seriously.
Christie Snodgrass asked KCTV5 to show the picture taken earlier this week of her 14-year-old daughter Emily Snodgrass, the subject of cyber-bullying. She said young Emily is no stranger to bullying.
“Through middle school there were rumors she was pregnant. Girls would come up and touch her belly. We were told to just ignore it that it would go away,” Snodgrass said. “Emily unfortunately did have a suicide attempt last year from all of the bullying.”
Then, this week, a student used their cell phone to snap a picture of the Tonganoxie High School freshman in the locker room.
“I expected to have privacy in a locker room,” Emily said. “The girls are always on their phones so I wasn’t suspicious.”
She was only in her bra and spandex underwear and had no idea the picture was being taken until friends saw it posted on Snapchat, a social media instant messaging site.
“The girl had written the words, ‘Exposed!’ ‘I don’t give a F’ ‘I hate her,’” Snodgrass said.
“I broke down into tears because there’s all these people looking at me. I have really bad anxiety and they are all telling me ‘Oh have you seen this? Have you seen this?’ I hear cliques of people in the hallway talking about it,” Emily said.
The Tonganoxie School District said it severely disciplined the student who took and posted the picture Tuesday. Because of student privacy, they could not go into detail about the punishment.
“Sad news day if this is newsworthy. Kids need to come to school to be cared for and learn but know when poor choices are made, it won’t be on the evening news,” Superintendent Lyn Rantz wrote.
“It is a big issue, it is newsworthy because they need to do something about it, instead of sweeping it under the rug,” Snodgrass said.
Read more at KCTV 5