There is a lot more to be said about the top story this week:
Educational Malpractice
Multiple girls at Sixth Ward Middle School in Thibodaux, La., “begged” their school counselor — and when that failed, the school’s deputy sheriff— for help: boys were using A.I. to create photos of them without clothes — and posting them online. Because the photos were posted to Snapchat, where they were quickly auto-deleted, school officials couldn’t find them, and Principal Danielle Coriell didn’t even believe such images were being posted because “Kids lie a lot.” For months they still circulated around the school, and the “teasing was relentless.” Finally, one of the victims — a 13-year-old eighth grader — saw boys showing a picture of her around on the school bus. “That’s when I got angry,” the unnamed girl said — at her discipline hearing. Yep, for “attacking” one of the boys, she was expelled and sent to an “alternative” school. The boy has not been disciplined — and the principal refused to comment on that. The Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office was able to recover some of the images, proving the girls were telling the truth. Two boys are charged with crimes, and not the girl. The girl’s parents hired several attorneys to fight the school. (RC/AP) …Since obviously, the school won’t fight for her.
More Details
As the story indicates, this went on for months. The 13-year-old who finally snapped first became involved in supporting two friends who came to her for help. Those girls learned that the boys had created naked photos of them by getting nude body images from the Internet, and then switching out the body’s faces for theirs. The source story from AP said it was with “A.I.,” and that’s possibly even true, but that sort of manipulation has been possible for many years with Photoshop and other tools.
A.I. can certainly make that manipulation easier, if you use a non-mainstream model that doesn’t have safeguards against what, in my opinion, is a very serious crime: they were, in a very real sense, creating child pornography. The story had nothing about that aspect, which in my opinion indicates a serious lapse in reporting: it’s such an obvious question to pursue with law enforcement. AP put two reporters on this story, and at least one did go to the school, with a staff photographer.
At the beginning, when the two friends came to the 13-year-old for support, she took them (“one nearly in tears”) to the guidance counselor. At the time, she didn’t even know that she also was a victim of the faked photos.
Law Enforcement Takes it Seriously
The school did investigate, but couldn’t find the photos, hence the principal’s despicable accusation that the girls were lying. That, in part, was based on their laughable contention when, as AP reported, the “investigation came up cold that day as no student took responsibility.” Snort! Sheriff’s investigators of course have better investigatory tools: they found “nude images of eight female middle school students and two adults,” AP reported, though without specifying how long that took.
The way I would have worded that: actual investigators found “faked nude images of eight female children from the school, as well as two adults.” (The adults’ genders were not mentioned.)
Call the primary victims of this crime what they are: children. Not “underaged women” as such victims are so often called, including in the widely reported Epstein scandal. They’re children.
AP’s reporters brought in yet another expert, Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University, who told them that most schools are “just kind of burying their heads in the sand, hoping that this isn’t happening.”
But it is happening, and yay that this blew up into a big story, and — I hope — a big lawsuit. That should wake up schools all across the country: the Lafourche Parish School District’s policy manual doesn’t even talk about this aspect of cyberbullying, AP found.
As noted, two boys were charged with crimes. The girl has not been, the department says, due to the “totality of the circumstances.” At least some of the adults in this story have common sense.
Hostile Environment
Not only did the boys create a massively “hostile environment” in a place that’s supposed to feel safe for children, but for school staff to allege that the girls are simply lying is outrageous: imagine how difficult it is to report that boys are distributing what they purport to be their naked bodies! It is almost certainly humiliating to have to simply talk about that, especially when it’s true (humiliation stacked on top of humiliation).
The AP reporters at least understand that: “Once again, as kids increasingly use new tech to hurt one another,” wrote reporters Heather Hollingsworth and Jack Brook, “adults are behind the curve, said Sergio Alexander, a research associate at Texas Christian University focused on emerging technology.” That sentence introduces his quote: “When we ignore the digital harm,” Alexander said, “the only moment that becomes visible is when the victim finally breaks.”
Which, indeed, is exactly how this story suddenly burst into the national news, much to the very deserved embarrassment of the school district as they likely will head to court to defend their indefensible actions.
Expulsion
As we have seen in countless Zero Tolerance stories, schools are quick to blame children when the professionally educated adults at the schools aren’t held to the same standards as pupils.
Yet Louisiana as a state is actually on the ball on this topic. “Title 14 – Criminal Law §14:73.13. Unlawful deepfakes” (as revised in 2024) says, “‘Deepfake’ means any audio or visual media in an electronic format, including any motion picture film or video recording, that is created, altered, or digitally manipulated in a manner that would falsely appear to a reasonable observer to be an authentic record of the actual speech or conduct of the individual or replace an individual’s likeness with another individual and depicted in the recording.”
Here is the relevant part of the law:
Any person who, with knowledge that the material is a deepfake depicting a minor, knowingly advertises, distributes, exhibits, exchanges with, promotes, or sells any sexual material that depicts a minor engaging in sexual conduct shall be punished by imprisonment at hard labor for not less than ten nor more than thirty years, a fine of not more than fifty thousand dollars, or both. At least ten years of the sentence of imprisonment imposed shall be served without benefit of probation, parole, or suspension of sentence.
Whether a deepfake of a naked child constitutes them “engaging in sexual conduct” is up to a court to decide, but consider that law’s definition of that point: “‘Sexual conduct’ means any of the following, whether actual or simulated: sexual intercourse … [or] exhibition of the genitals or pubic or rectal area for the purpose of sexual stimulation of the viewer….”
On the face of it, those boys could be in for “imprisonment at hard labor for not less than ten nor more than thirty years.” This is serious, serious business.
The Girl’s Real Injuries
The effects on the girl go way beyond the humiliation of fake nude photos.
“I went the whole day with getting bullied and getting made fun of about my body,” she said at her disciplinary hearing. When she got on the bus to go home, apparently immediately after the principal dismissed her accusation as lies, the boy on the bus was showing other boys naked photos with her face attached. The girl slapped him. “The boy shrugged off the slap, a video shows,” AP reports — it’s common for school buses to have security cameras.
When he shrugged it off, she slapped him again, and called out, “Why am I the only one doing this?” Two other students backed her up, punching the boy, and the girl joined them in the beating.
The girl previously had no disciplinary record. When the disciplinary panel, convened after the bus incident, ruled that she should be expelled and sent to an alternative school for 89 days — a full semester — the girl broke down, weeping. “She just felt like she was victimized multiple times,” her father said — “by the pictures and by the school not believing her and by them putting her on a bus and then expelling her for her actions.”
AP identifies the girl’s father by name; I’m choosing not to in a surely futile attempt to shield the girl from identification. It’s very likely that if lawsuits are filed, she will be identified by name, and that’s OK if she chooses to stand up and bravely represent herself and other girls at the school.
But that’s a tough “if” considering she has already crumbled at least somewhat under the pressure.
How so, beyond weeping? The “alternative” school didn’t even notice (or care) that she was skipping meals, her father said, and didn’t complete any of her assignments. Her father got her to a therapist to treat her resulting depression and anxiety. “She kind of got left behind,” he said, though “kind of” is awfully charitable of him.
Yep, she was dumped to fend for herself as punishment for reporting her own victimization. Her attorneys got the expulsion reversed, after a significant amount of damage was done by the uncaring “alternative” school, and being isolated from her support network of friends for weeks.
“At the disciplinary hearing,” AP reported, “the principal refused to answer questions from the girl’s attorneys about what kind of school discipline the boy would face.”
“She,” said one of her attorneys told the school board in the expulsion reversal hearing, “is a victim.”
And the response of Superintendent of Schools Jarod Martin? “Sometimes in life we can be both victims and perpetrators,” he said.
The principal and superintendent should be prohibited from ever working with children again. The sad thing is, there are people just like them at the helm of many, many schools.
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Reading this story shows me the path of how women — and young girls — have been victimized for decades. Females shy away from crying rape because of this same atmosphere by the people, most often men, in charge. I see that same mentality here with this story. I appreciate that you use TRUE to delve into important topics like this in a way that AP decided to avoid.
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Although as we see with the principal, women can buy into the same mentality. -rc
Thank you for taking such a strong stand on this incident. Children are meant to be protected by the school system, not victimized. I’m sure there are boundless examples in other schools, and I admire Louisiana for having such legislation with meaningful penalties.
This is so ridiculous in this day and age. I told my kids years ago that if they see something wrong, shout it from the rooftops until someone takes notice and does something about it. It’s terrible that people who we send our children to every weekday can’t be trusted to do the right thing. I agree–the two adults should be banned from ever working in a position with children again. And though we’ve seen zero consequences for adults in scenarios like this in the past, something tells me that the multimillion dollar settlement the school will have to pay might actually force them to do the right thing: fire them immediately.
This was infuriating for so many reasons.
The most significant of course is that the school has a legal mandate to take these things seriously and it failed utterly. If they can’t figure it out bring in an expert.
But there is also a ZT aspect to this. When I went to school ages ago there were fights, and the typical punishment (if any) was detention. But mandatory expulsion on a completely clean record? And no discipline for the offenders? Is this the current status?
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Good questions, and apparently the answer to all is yes. Just two of the boys (maybe the creators of the images? Unclear) are announced as to being charged, without names, as appropriate for juveniles. Law enforcement and prosecutors are taking the situation seriously, but it sure looks like the school is not. -rc
I’m not trying to blame the victims, but… did it really NEVER occur to any of the girls to, yaknow, take a goddamned screenshot of any of the AI ‘photos’?
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The photos were never sent to the girls. At most they caught a glimpse on the boys’ phones, perhaps even as taunting “look what I have!” stuff. So no: they had no opportunity to do that, as far as I can tell from my source material. -rc
That’s one heck of a response and question. That’s like asking someone who is robbing you at gun point to hang on a second while you take a picture of them!
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He was assuming that they got copies on their own phones (the only way to “screenshot”) but no, that wasn’t the case. -rc
Thanks for this expanded coverage, most news sites barely covered the topic. During my time teaching middle school (25 years ago –ouch!), we were always on the lookout for bullying — especially in the hallways, to/from lunch, and after school (a teacher was always assigned to each student pick-up spot as well as the local bus stop). I’m really grateful that our counseling staff and administration took reports of bullying and/or bullied students seriously.
Your comment about women sometimes joining in is on target. One type of bullying we saw a lot was “burn books” which were mostly passed around by the girls — targeting other girls.
It’s also true that the police can be really helpful — if you include them. I was once asked by some students to teach them about hacking (they knew I was a computer expert as well as a science teacher). I said absolutely and invited them to a lunch session in the computer lab to learn about hacking. They were surprised that my guest speaker was an officer from the local police department who was tasked with tracking down hackers. The kids learned a lot, mostly Don’t. Do. It. Unfortunately, it is an arms race and the cops have to struggle to keep up on limited budgets.
This happened to 44 young women at the high school in my hometown last year. When the young women started to find out about the AI pictures, they complained to the school admin, who apparently didn’t do a lot to protect them, including allowing the perpetrators to stay in class, sitting by their victims. It’s been a mess, but the young women and their parents refused to back down. As of September 2025, 3 teenage boys were arrested.
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A very parallel situation: school officials (in this case, in Iowa) doing nothing to protect the girls, yet law enforcement considers it to be the serious crime that it is and makes arrests after careful investigation, even though the crime is compounded by school inaction. This is why I dug deeper into this one: I knew it wasn’t an isolated incident, it’s likely to increase as the tech gets easier to access, and kids need to understand just how serious it is. High schoolers especially are risking long prison sentences as they are much more likely to be tried as adults. -rc
Something ethically and socially has massively changed in just the past decade, both here and in Europe, and this school AI bullying story just points to one more example. In many cities — as in this story — the victims are portrayed as the perps, when the actual perps are not prosecuted. This spills over into larger society where we see similar preferred treatment of criminal activity in sanctuary cities, to the detriment of the law abiding citizenry who suffer.
The AI fake issue just shows how far we’ve come from “women deserve protection and safe spaces” and the “women’s rights” movement of the 70’s-80’s and Title IX protections to now where women, especially young teen girls, are being harmed and their privacy invaded.
Although the boy perps were finally caught here, I’d be willing to bet that the very same school system would let these boys compete in sports and share locker room and shower spaces with these VERY SAME young ladies they’ve victimized — all they have to do is claim a different gender.
The country has lost its bearings. Your outrage at the AI story is spot on, and it points to how far we’ve let our young women down.
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Sorry, but you lost me with the incredibly ridiculous locker room scenario. You’re buying into silly scare propaganda with that one, and no I will not host a debate on that in this space. -rc
Sorry, but you lost me with, “This spills over into larger society where we see similar preferred treatment of criminal activity in sanctuary cities, to the detriment of the law abiding citizenry who suffer.”
The only sanctuary provided by these cities is to all immigrants from being policed by local departments in civil immigration issues and *only* these types of issues. They simply don’t allow federal government authorities to deputize the local police into being an enforcement extension of the federal immigration system.
At no time is there a “preferred treatment of criminal activity” as *nothing* is done by local authorities to prevent or impede the I.C.E. or Border Protection agents from executing any of their tasks in the city.
In *no* way is “law abiding citizenry” harmed or caused to suffer by sanctuary from federal deputization, as all federal law enforcement continues as usual. In fact it’s beneficial, it keeps more of the local police free to do their actually needed functions: securing the public from local criminals, felonious crime and physical harm. It also keeps local immigrant communities working with the city police when serious crime is committed and not against them.
I can’t remember where I read it, but a male student kept coming up behind a female student and snapping her bra. She told him to stop, complained to the principal and guidance counselor, with the usual lack of results.
Finally, she’d had enough and then some and turned around and smacked the boy across the face.
She and her parents, as well as the boy and his folks, were called into the principal’s office, with the intention of disciplining HER. Her mum beat them to the punch by announcing how grateful she was that the school was finally doing something about the boy’s behavior. The principal coughed and stuttered, but the girl’s mum told the boy’s parents what had been happening and they were appalled.
“Is this true, Sonny?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“No buts, young man! Now apologize to this young lady and we’ll discuss this at home.”
That is NOT the way the school had intended the meeting to go, but it was the way it should have gone, thanks to the girl’s mum.
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One hopes it was a lesson to the school staff, but I fear not. -rc
I thought I remembered reading that one on Not Always Right, so I searched for it and found the link. It’s a story from 2015.
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And an excellent story it is: it’s exactly how a parent should have handled it. -rc
The only thing I’m surprised about in this story is that none of the school officials has been reported as saying “It will hurt his (their) future prospects if he’s (they’re) arrested.”
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Well, that hasn’t been reported, but we can’t prove it wasn’t said along the way. -rc
This whole thing of AI generated fake news & porn shows how woefully behind legislation is regarding tech. And tech buying the current administration doesn’t help.
So long as money is the #1 priority in all decision-making, this is what we’ll get. (And make no mistake, money talks in education!) Very few voices (right or left) in leadership are acknowledging that these are human beings being abused.