Transgender teen defending herself during school fight faces criminal charges
A 16-year-old transgender student who claims to have been defending herself against fellow classmates now faces criminal charges for the fight.
Jewlyes Gutierrez says she snapped and finally fought back after two years of relentless bullying over her sexuality by students at California’s Hercules High School.
Cell phone video capturing the resulting Nov. 15 fight shows four girls scratching and pulling each other’s hair before Jewlyes is seen trying to run away.
When it ended all four students were suspended, the Contra Costa Unified School District confirmed, but it’s only Jewlyes who 10 days later was charged with battery by the district attorney.
Read more at New York Daily News
The school district’s president Charles Ramsey slammed the choice of action, calling the criminal charges against Gutierrez “biased” and “absurd.”
“There are fights that happen at school campuses every day. What’s the real motive here?” he lashed out to the Daily News by phone Thursday.
The students went through a period of apologizing to each other, then returning to school from suspensions. Shortly after, charges were brought agains Gutierrez, but no one else. Jewlyes’s sister has since created an online petition against the charge on Change.org.
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