A middle school student in Virginia who went viral last week with a horrifying accusation of playground intolerance is coming clean.
Late last week, Amari Allen, a 12-year-old student at Immanuel Christian School in Springfield, Virginia, accused three white male classmates of bullying her to the point where they held her down, called her racist names, and cut off her dreadlocks. At the time, she gave tearful TV interviews about the alleged incident, and her story quickly went viral as the school and police began to investigate.
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Allen said she’d long been bullied at school, and the three boys took it even further than that, calling her “ugly” and “nappy” among other alleged epithets while they cut off large chunks of her hair. Horrified, the school’s directors immediately reached out to law enforcement to investigate the claims, and the story took on a life of its own online.
To get a sense of the outrage and shock resulting from the accusations, you can watch this national news report on the incident, filmed and broadcasted on Friday, just days before the whole thing unraveled (below):
Wow.
But as we noted, the real story came to light on Monday. It all fell apart after the child’s family issued a public statement officially apologizing to the boys in question, while acknowledging the young girl had made the whole thing up.
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The statement read (below):
“To those young boys and their parents, we sincerely apologize for the pain and anxiety these allegations have caused. To the administrators and families of Immanuel Christian School, we are sorry for the damage this incident has done to trust within the school family and the undue scorn it has brought to the school. To the broader community, who rallied in such passionate support for our daughter, we apologize for betraying your trust. We understand there will be consequences, and we’re prepared to take responsibility for them. We know that it will take time to heal, and we hope and pray that the boys, their families, the school and the broader community will be able to forgive us in time.”
Unbelievable…
The school also issued a statement in the wake of the story being uncovered as false (below):
“We can now confirm that the student who accused three of her classmates of assault has acknowledged that the allegations were false. We’re grateful to the Fairfax County Police Department for their diligent work to investigate these allegations. While we are relieved to hear the truth and bring the events of the past few days to a close, we also feel tremendous pain for the victims and the hurt on both sides of this conflict. We recognize that we now enter what will be a long season of healing.”
Investigators still don’t know why Allen made the story up, or what prompted her to go through with it for so long. It’s also unclear how her family came to know the accusation to be false in order to release that statement in the first place, exactly, though one can assume Allen may have come clean at some point in the last few days.
Both the family and the school have reportedly declined further comment on the matter. And because the girl is a minor, the police department that investigated the allegations won’t say any more about the case, either.
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[Image via CBS News/YouTube]
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