Principal told girls to follow dress code or boys might touch them, students in WV say

Two West Virginia eighth-graders said their principal told female students to follow the dress code or boys might touch them inappropriately, and that if they were touched while breaking the code, they shouldn’t bother reporting it to administrators.

“Our principal, Mrs. Perry … she called us to the cafeteria to talk about the dress code, and once we got in there she told us not to wear pajamas, crop tops or ripped jeans or show our shoulders,” one of the Huntington East Middle School students told members of the Cabell County school board during a meeting on Tuesday, April 5. “After that, they told us that they did not want boys to be distracted by our clothes and they said that if we get touched inappropriately while wearing these clothes to not tell the school because they won’t do anything.”

After mentioning the Huntington East Middle School principal, De Morrow-Perry, by name, a school board member interrupted Hughes and said something inaudible. For the rest of her testimony, the student said only “she,” “they” or “this person.”

Students said the discussion about the dress code took place at school on Friday, April 1.

A spokesman for Cabell County Schools did not immediately return a request for comment.

The school district told WOWKTV that administrators were aware of the allegations and had launched an investigation into Morrow-Perry on Monday, April 4.

The principal has been suspended for three days without pay, but Superintendent Ryan Saxe said it was ⁠for reasons unrelated to the allegations, according to the Herald-Dispatch.

Students said that the principal’s comments constituted victim blaming and sent a dangerous message to young girls.

“Instead of just telling us what not to wear and what’s against the dress code, they said that girls were trying to gain attention from boys and that boys were going to touch us and they were going to joke about touching us,” another eighth-grader told the school board. “This infuriates me because she told the entire school of middle-school girls ⁠— sixth-, seventh- and eighth grade ⁠— 11- to 14 year-old girls, that because of what they were wearing, boys were going to touch them, and that she didn’t want to know about it if it happened.”

Such a message is both unethical and illegal, Sharon Pressman, executive director for the Contact Rape Crisis Center in Huntington, West Virginia, told McClatchy News Service.

“All adults in West Virginia are mandatory reporters, so for the children to be told that if something happened to them they were not to report it to the school, to the principal, is certainly breaking the law,” she said.

Pressman, who also testified before the school board, said she is working with an employee of the school board office to set up a meeting with the school so that her organization could share resources on how to teach children about issues surrounding inappropriate behavior and sexual assault.

“It certainly isn’t a little girl’s job to prevent herself from being assaulted,” she said. “It’s never about the clothing. It’s never about what you have on. It’s about the power that somebody else holds over you or tries to hold over you, and that’s how the violence occurs.”

Last year, Pressman said her crisis center, which serves six counties in southwestern West Virginia, served nearly 900 clients, half of whom were children under 18.

Because of the principal’s comments, Huntington East Middle School no longer feels like a safe place, students said.

“School should be a place where students feel safe and have adults they can trust to talk about serious issues with,” one of the girls said during her testimony. “And instead (the principal) made us feel unsafe and told us not to report if something serious like this happened to us.”

This story was originally published April 6, 2022 at 11:39 AM with the headline "Principal told girls to follow dress code or boys might touch them, students in WV say."