Add thelocalreport.in As A Trusted Source
The teasing was continuous. Artificial intelligence-generated nude photos of a 13-year-old girl and her friends were circulating on social media and became the talk of a Louisiana middle school.
The girls sought help, first from a school guidance counselor and then from a sheriff’s deputy assigned to their school. But the images were shared on Snapchat, an app that deletes messages seconds after being viewed, and adults couldn’t find them. The principal even doubted his existence.
Among children, the photos were still circulating. When the 13-year-old girl boarded the Lafourche Parish school bus at the end of the day, a classmate was showing one of them to her friend.
“That’s when I got angry,” the eighth-grader said, recalling her discipline hearing.
Fed up, he attacked a boy on the bus and invited others to join him. She was kicked out of Sixth Ward Middle School for more than 10 weeks and sent to an alternative school. She said the boy she and her friends suspected of making the pictures was not sent to the alternative school with her. The 13-year-old girl’s lawyers allege that he completely avoided school discipline.
When the Sheriff’s Department investigated the matter, they took adverse action. He blamed the two boys who were accused of sharing the explicit photos – and not the girl.
The Louisiana episode highlights the nightmarish potential of AI deepfakes. They can, and do, shape children’s lives – at school, and at home. And while schools are working to address artificial intelligence in classroom instruction, they have often done little to prepare for what the new technology means for cyberbullying and harassment.
Once again, as children are using new technology to hurt each other, adults are close behind, said Sergio Alexander, a research associate at Texas Christian University who focuses on emerging technology.
“When we ignore digital harm, the only moment it becomes visible is when the victim finally breaks down,” Alexander said.
In Lafourche Parish, the school district followed all of its protocols for reporting misconduct, Superintendent Jarrod Martin said in a statement. He said a “one-sided story” of the case has been presented that fails to portray its “totality and complex nature”.
A girl’s nightmare starts with rumors
After hearing rumors about the nude photos, the 13-year-old girl said she went to the guidance counselor at about 7 a.m. on Aug. 26 with two of her friends — one of whom was almost in tears. associated Press Her name is not being released because she is a minor and because the AP typically does not name victims of sex crimes.
According to testimony given at her school’s disciplinary hearing, she went there for moral support, but initially did not realize that her photos were there.
Ultimately, the district and the sheriff’s office said in a joint statement, a weeklong investigation at the school in Thibodaux, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) southwest of New Orleans, revealed AI-generated nude photos of eight female middle school students and two adults.
The girl’s father, Joseph Daniels, described her as having “complete nakedness on her face.”
Until recently, creating realistic deepfakes required some technical skill. technology It’s now easy to grab a photo from social media, “nude” it, and create a viral nightmare for an unsuspecting classmate.
“Most schools are burying their heads in the sand hoping this isn’t happening,” said Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University.
Lafourche Parish School District was just beginning to develop policies on artificial intelligence. According to documents provided through a records request, the school-level AI guidance primarily addresses academics. The district also had not updated its training on cyberbullying to reflect the threat of AI-generated, sexually explicit images. The curriculum used by its schools was from 2018.
A school investigation faces obstacles
Although the girls at Sixth Ward Middle School had not seen these photos firsthand, they had heard about them from boys at school. Based on those conversations, the girls accused a classmate and two students from other schools of making and spreading nude photos on Snapchat and possibly tiktok,
Principal Danielle Coryell said the investigation went cold that day because no student took responsibility. According to a recording of the disciplinary hearing, a deputy assigned to the school searched unsuccessfully on social media for the images.
The girl’s father recalled a conversation with the school counselor that morning, saying, “I was assured that it was just rumors and hearsay.”
But the girl was unhappy, and a police incident report revealed that other girls were reporting that they too had been victims. The 13-year-old girl returned to the counselor in the afternoon and asked to call her father. She said she was refused.
Her father says she sent a text message that said, “Father,” and nothing. They didn’t talk. Continuing to make fun, the girl texted her sister, “This can’t be handled.”
As the school day ended, the principal became suspicious. At the disciplinary hearing, the girl’s attorney asked why the sheriff’s deputy did not check the phone of the boy the girls were accusing and why he was allowed to ride on the same bus as the girl.
,Children Tells a lot of lies,” replied Principal Coryell. “They lie about all kinds of things. They blow a lot of things out of control on a daily basis. At 17 years, they do this all the time. So as far as I know, when I checked again at 2 o’clock, there was no picture.
A fight breaks out on the school bus
When the girl boarded the bus 15 minutes later, the boy was showing the AI-generated pictures to a friend. The girl said that fake nude photos of her friends were visible on the boy’s phone, a claim confirmed by a photo taken on the bus. A video from a school bus shows at least a half-dozen students circulating the images, Superintendent Martin said at the school board meeting.
“I was bullied all day and made fun of about my body,” the girl said during her hearing. Anger was rising, she said, as she boarded the bus.
Principal Coryell said, after seeing the boy and his phone, he slapped him. A video shows the boy refused the slap.
He hit him a second time. Then, the principal said, the girl asked out loud: “Why am I the only one doing this?” Two classmates hit the boy, the principal said, before the 13-year-old climbed onto the seat and punched him, crushing him.
Video of the fight was posted on Facebook. “The overwhelming sentiment on social media was outrage and demands that the students involved in the fight be held accountable,” the district and sheriff’s office said in their joint statement released in November.
The girl had no prior disciplinary problems, but she was assigned to an alternative school because the district had expelled her for an entire semester – 89 school days.
A few weeks later, a boy is accused
The boys were first charged, three weeks after the fight, on the same day as the girl’s disciplinary hearing.
The student was charged with 10 counts of unlawful dissemination of images created by artificial intelligence under a new Louisiana state law, part of a wave of such laws across the country. A second boy was charged with similar charges in December, the Sheriff’s Department said. None were identified by authorities because of their age.
The girl will not face any charges due to what the Sheriff’s Office described as “the totality of the circumstances.”
At the disciplinary hearing, the principal refused to answer questions from the girl’s attorneys about what kind of school discipline the boy would face.
The district said in a statement that federal student privacy laws prevent it from discussing the disciplinary records of individual students. The girl’s attorney, Gregory Miller, said he was not aware of any school discipline for the classmate accused of sharing the photos.
Ultimately, the panel expelled the 13-year-old. She cried, her father said.
He said in an interview, “She felt like she had been tortured multiple times – by the photographs and by the school not believing her and putting her in the bus and then kicking her out for her actions.”
result in a student deviating from the curriculum
Her father said that after being sent to an alternative school, the girl started skipping meals. Unable to concentrate, she did not complete any online school work for several days, after which her father got her treatment for depression and anxiety.
When he stopped doing his work, initially no one paid attention, his father said.
“She was kind of left behind,” he said.
Her lawyers appealed to the school board, and another hearing was scheduled seven weeks later.
By then enough time had passed that she could return to her old school on probation. But because she missed her assignment before getting treatment for depression, the district wanted her to remain at an alternative site for the next 12 weeks.
For students who are suspended or expelled, the effects can last for years. They are more likely to be suspended again. They become isolated from their classmates, and are more likely to disengage from their school as well. They are more likely to have lower grades and lower graduation rates.
“She’s already missed a lot of school,” Matt Ory, one of the girl’s attorneys, told the board on Nov. 5. “She is a victim.
“She,” he repeated, “is a victim.”
Martin, the superintendent, retorted: “Sometimes in life we can be both victims and perpetrators.”
But the board got carried away. One member, Henry LaFont, said: “There’s a lot of things in that video I don’t like. But I’m also trying to see what she went through all day.” They allowed him to return to campus immediately. Her first day back at school was November 7, although she will remain on probation until January 29.
That means no dances, no sports, and no extracurricular activities. Her father said that she had already missed basketball tryouts, which meant she would not be able to play this season. He finds the situation “heartbreaking”.
Her father said, “I was hoping that she would make great friends, they would go to high school together and, you know, it would keep everyone out of trouble and get them on the right path.” “I think they ruined it.”
,
The Associated Press’s education coverage receives financial support from several private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropy, a list of supporters, and funded coverage areas on AP.org.
,
Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas.