Parents with children who attend Williston Middle-High in Williston, Florida are outraged after two eighth grade boys allegedly sexually abused another student and were allowed to return to the school.
An article published on Friday (Nov. 18) by Gainesville, Florida news station WCJB 20 revealed that reporters spoke with several parents about the disturbing incident. Two teenage boys are accused of sodomizing a sixth grade student with a pipe, recording the act and then posting the footage on social media. Marion County Sheriff’s deputies have been assigned to the case and are investigating the matter as battery. The outlet added that the incident did not take place on school grounds, but in Marion county.
On Nov. 9, the school’s Facebook page posted a statement about the troubling situation. “The School Board of Levy County has been in communication with local law enforcement officials since the initial report of an ongoing law enforcement investigation relating to SBLC students in another county. The SBLC has taken steps to mitigate any interaction between all involved parties in order to ensure the safety of all students,” the message read.
Miranda Stewart has children who attend Williston Middle-High and on Friday, she spoke to WCJB 20 about how the school is handling things. She noted that she isn’t pleased that the students in question were allowed to return to campus. “It’s going to affect the way people view you as a school board to say this didn’t happen here and I understand innocent until proven guilty and all of that but if there’s an investigation, they don’t need to be going to school,” Stewart shared. The mother believes the two boys’ families are trying to keep the issue under wraps.
“They didn’t want it to go out, they wanted people to delete the social media, they wanted people to delete the Reddit and things like that. It shouldn’t be something that’s quiet, this is something that affects everybody who has a child that attends Levy County — obviously not every school, but the middle-high school clearly,” Stewart shared with WCJB 20. “I had questions about it, and my children expressed to me that they did not want those children to come back to school, and that they felt it was wrong, and that those boys should be held accountable. So, I was like somebody obviously needs to say something or do something to make this known because they were kind of sweeping it under the rug,” she added.