The middle school student who was viciously attacked by a gang of girls at Clark Middle School, returned to campus on April 11, after ending up in the hospital and then on bedrest for a few days.
With community supporters by her side, she bravely walked through the doors where staff and the principal had ignored the warning signs that led up to the beating earlier this month. After school, she and her mom were picked up by a new community supporters driving a yellow Lamborghini.
But by the end of that first day, Peyton Guthrie said she felt unsafe at Clark. The bullying had started anew in subtle ways, just as it had started before that fateful day when she was targeted while in class and kicked dozens of time by the posse of students who had menaced her leading up to the attack.
So she took up the offer from the principal of her prior school, Hanshew Middle School, and is finishing out the year there.
Natasha Guthrie, her mother, shared with Must Read Alaska that the day back at Clark started well, but that her daughter sensed that she was being subtly menaced. Family and friends are now helping out with transportation to and from Hanshew.
Peyton Guthrie was comparatively lucky. A 16-year-old girl in St. Louis, Missouri was also savagely beaten this spring, and had her head repeatedly banged against concrete, while others stood by cheering, leaving her with severe brain damage. After two months, Kaylee Gains is still in the hospital, although she has started to relearn how to walk. This attack, too, was a minority student attacking a white student — both were girls.
In an Anchorage courtroom this week, the arraignment for two of the three girls accused in the Clark Middle School attack was completed. One alleged attacker is apparently still on the lam, along with her parents, who are being sought by police.
The alleged attackers were all about age 14, and all were girls of Pacific Islander heritage, while their victim was light skinned, someone who had endured racist taunts for being an “albino” at the school, which has a student body made up of 97% minority.
Natasha Guthrie, meanwhile, has set up a Facebook page to help parents of children bullied or beaten in Anchorage schools find each other and work toward creating safer schools by having their voices heard and their stories told. That page is “Take A Stand” at this link.
Guthrie has also appeared and spoken to the Anchorage School Board about the violence at Clark.
Other parents attended the meeting and wanted to speak but were told by School Board President Margo Bellamy that they would not be allowed to address the board because she had not signed up and followed the procedures for giving testimony. Watch Bellamy tell parents they could not testify at this video clip of the meeting:
Bellamy and the liberal school board have instituted “restorative justice” practices in the Anchorage schools, which means no or little punishment for certain students who commit crimes. It’s seen as a way to reduce the number of suspensions and expulsions for behavioral problems.
For victims of crimes in schools, it’s experienced as the school system protecting the perpetrator and forcing the victim to enroll in a different school.
