HENRY COUNTY, Ga. — A Henry County Schools staff member is on administrative leave after a parent said her daughter told her she was hit at school. The distraught mother said her child was covered with scratches and bruises.
Britney Walker said she got a disturbing phone call from her daughter's principal on Tuesday afternoon..
“He said that, 'the only thing I can tell you is that she wasn’t sexually assaulted," she explained. "And I said, 'does that mean she was physically assaulted?' And he said, ‘yes.'"
She said he told her there had been an incident involving her daughter, Nevaeh, and a staff member and it was being investigated by HR.
Britney said she immediately went to Dutchtown Elementary School to pick her up.
“She said, 'mom, my back hurts. It's burning and it's stinging,'" the mother explained. "I looked at her back and when I pulled her shirt up, she had welts on her back.”
Her daughter opened up about what happened.
"Went to the library and my computer wasn't charging and I needed another charger and she got mad at me for not having it," Neveah said.
She claimed that before they were walked out of the classroom, the teacher lined her and several other students up.
"She literally hit us in our backs and we had two people that saw what happened," she said. "Another teacher came to take us to the quiet room where we could write a statement of what happened.”
Her mother said they spent Wednesday night at the Henry County Police Department filing a report before having her daughter examined at the hospital. Britney said they are sharing the story because they don't want this to happen to anyone else.
"It’s nowhere you can go and assault kids where you don’t go to jail," she said. "If I abuse my daughter, I’d be in jail. So, why would she be different? She should not be able to ever work in a school system ever again.”
Britney said Neveah is terrified to go back to school.
The school district told 11Alive that HR was investigating what they described as a "staff member having an inappropriate interaction with students" at Dutchtown Elementary. The employee will remain on leave during the course of the investigation.