Student suspended for not reporting bully

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LITHONIA, Ga., Feb. 29 (UPI) -- A Georgia high school student who alleges she was threatened at school said Wednesday she was suspended for not reporting she was being bullied.

Essence McDougald said she was locked in a Lithonia High School bathroom by two older girls who had threatened her earlier, wrote a three-page letter explaining it to her school counselor, and was given a warning from an assistant principal about being suspended.

Her grandmother then stepped in to report the charge, after which all the students involved were suspended for two days, WSB-TV, Atlanta, reported Wednesday.

"If someone tells me they are going to suspend me for 7-10 days if I am being bullied, I'm not going to that assistant principal and reporting anything. Evidently they are saying everybody is bullying everybody," grandmother Cornelius McDougald said.

A DeKalb County School District spokesman said the relationship "between this student and another has been going on for some weeks and months now. We will continue to have mutual mediations to de-escalate the situation."

Essence, whose age was not reported, and her grandmother are considering home schooling, the television station reported.