(NewsNation) — Less than six months after she started a new school, Allyson Lopez’s daughter was listed for sale in an online mock slave auction allegedly run by at least six eighth graders at a Massachusetts middle school.
Lopez told NewsNation it was the fifth time her daughter, who is Black, had been subjected to racial slurs by other students at the 89% white Southwick Regional School.
The 13-year-olds alleged to be involved were suspended in February for the Snapchat posts, according to the Hampden County District Attorney’s Office.
But after complaints were brought to his attention, D.A. Anthony Gulluni filed criminal charges in March against the students for “hateful, racist online chat.”
“Hatred and racism have no place in this community,” Gulluni said as he announced the charges weeks after conducting an investigation.
“One who uses just racist terminology doesn’t necessarily commit a crime — that is constitutionally protected, as vile as it is,” Gulluni said on NewsNation’s “Dan Abrams Live.”
“This situation involves threats and bullying that amounts to criminal violations in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
Two students were charged with interference with civil rights, threat to commit a crime and witness interference. Four others were charged with threat to commit a crime.
Outrage over Southwick’s alleged ‘mock slave auction’
Jennifer Willard, the superintendent of Southwick-Tolland-Granville Regional Schools, released a statement after the incident, saying, “We can assure the community that the District does issue consequences in accordance with our school code of conduct in these types of circumstances … the District firmly believes that racism and discrimination have no place in our school community.”
Less than two days after charges came down, racist language was found written on a bathroom wall at the school, according to a letter sent by Willard to parents, reported NewsNation affiliate WWLP.
Southwick-Tolland-Granville Regional Schools did not return multiple emails requesting comment by NewsNation.
The middle schoolers’ potential prosecution has invoked a reckoning in the quiet community of less than 10,000, which is about 12 miles west of Springfield, Massachusetts.
“This is not just bullying. It’s important to call this what it is: It’s a hate crime, and they need to be educated on what this means for people of color,” Lopez, 55, told NewsNation. “We are raised in a society of young people who are getting away with way too much, and they have to make a change.”
In the weeks that followed the suspensions, more than a hundred community members showed up to school board meetings, including Lopez.
She demanded the resignation of the superintendent, the principal and a school board member.
The school has faced allegations of overlooking bullying in the past. A former Southwick student, Griffin Parrow, 18, told NewsNation he was relentlessly bullied over his sexual orientation but was told by school leaders at the time that he was overreacting.
Parrow said these incidents happened between 2017 and 2020 and that two of the administrators during his time at Southwick still work at the school.
He brought those concerns to the board in a meeting last month, asking members, “Why didn’t you protect me?”
“We had been trained to accept it as the norm and to not make a fuss,” he told NewsNation.
Were criminal charges against the middle schoolers appropriate?
Some community members viewed Gulluni’s decision to bring criminal charges as overkill and overreach.
“They should not be facing criminal charges, you know, they are children themselves,” Dana Flynn, a Southwick parent, told Boston TV station WFXT.
Bullying and hateful conduct in schools are normally handled internally by school officials. But as this behavior has gotten more attention in recent years, some prosecutors have determined it has crossed into criminality.
Last month, three middle school students in Maryland were charged with hate crimes for using Nazi salutes, swastikas and making bigoted comments toward a Jewish classmate.
A ninth-grader at Louisiana Catholic school was given a hate crime charge in 2022 after being caught on video throwing cotton balls at a Black student and whipping him with his belt.
Evidence of these acts on social media and a “heightened sensitivity around institutional neglect of these cases” have driven more prosecutions, Brian Levin, founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, said.
“In some ways, social media, for better or for worse, is a detector of something,” Levin said.
And with hate speech, the ramifications are felt beyond just the victim, he said. People who weren’t direct targets of the particular incident still may experience psycho-social impact, which may motivate prosecutors to send a clear message of zero tolerance.
But Levin warns that when it comes to minors, it can also lead to unnecessary punitive consequences.
“Hate crime penalty enhancements are the least applicable for juvenile, nonviolent first offenders, ” Levin said, “but if they are used, they should be narrowly employed to tilt someone towards a restorative justice approach like diversion programs.”
Levin said hate crime charges in minors should be a pathway for a teachable moment, but because there are no uniform systems in place to put kids on this path, judges tend to throw out these types of charges.
Tim Bakken, a law professor at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, said while prosecutors have every right to attach hate crime enhancements on charges — and in many cases, they do it to send a clear message — it’s important to understand larger implications.
“The obvious question is, will this be beneficial for society overall even though it might be beneficial for victims in specific cases?” he said.
In some cases, it may be, he said, but the legal system already has mechanisms in place to punish this conduct without needing to enhance charges.
“The early point of the criminal legal system, in categorizing somebody as a juvenile, was to provide a second chance for a person whose brain, in fact, was not fully developed,” Bakken said.
Lack of data collection on juvenile prosecutions, hate crimes
An FBI report released in January found that more than 1,300 hate crimes were reported in elementary schools, secondary schools and colleges in 2022, up from 896 in 2022 and 700 in 2018.
The bureau added that hate crimes are underreported by victims and, even though they are tracked in academic environments, hate crimes are not uniformly tracked by state and national agencies.
Data on how frequently minors are charged and prosecuted for hate crimes is scant as states rarely break down the charges by age.
“Hate crimes are an extension of bullying, and they could be motivated by a variety of factors,” Diane Hughes, a professor of applied psychology at New York University, said.
Kids learn behaviors from their families as to who is acceptable and who is not, but they are also learning it from patterns they see in the world through social media or from their leaders, she said.
Consequences of Southwick alleged ‘mock slave auction’ remain to be seen
Lopez says her daughter still doesn’t feel safe at Southwick Regional School and continues to reel from the trauma and indignity of racism. The mother says calling out hate is an important step not just for victims but for perpetrators.
“These kids are going to be adults one day, and if they have this hate in them at the age of 13 and 14, what are you thinking they’re going to become when they turn 18? They’re going to be adults one day, so we have to figure out how to work with them now.”
She worries that the students involved will have their charges dropped when they go before a judge and that the racial bullying won’t stop despite the firestorm.
“I think charges are one thing, but consequences are another,” she said.