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A 12-year-old Virginia girl’s claim that classmates bullied her and forcibly cut her hair, which became the subject of a police investigation and national news, has recanted after a review of the school’s security video proved the incident could not have occurred.
Last week, Amari Allen, a black sixth-grader at Immanuel Christian School in Springfield, Virginia, told her grandparents that three white sixth-grade boys — who, according to her, had been bullying her since the beginning of the school year — approached her during recess last Monday. One of them grabbed her and put his hand over her mouth, another seized her arms, and the third cut off some of her hair, she said.
“They put their hands over my mouth. They put my hands behind my back. And they started cutting my hair and saying it was ugly,” Amari told Washington’s WRC-TV.
Amari said the boys ran away, laughing, when the bell rang, but she was too frightened to report the incident to anyone at school.
Amari’s grandparents believed her story and asked Fairfax County police to investigate; the school made a similar request. This turned a simple schoolyard accusation into a matter for law enforcement. Then the story was picked up by WRC, an NBC owned-and-operated station, and ultimately became a national story on NBC Nightly News.
What made this alleged playground incident into fodder for a network newscast? First, it fit the media template of how white males, especially Christian ones, behave toward minorities (as, for instance, in the case of the Covington Catholic boys). Second, it gave the media another opportunity to beat up on Republicans, specifically Vice President Mike Pence. His wife, Karen Pence, teaches art part-time at Immanuel Christian, hence the NBC headline for the story: “3 boys at Christian school where Karen Pence teaches allegedly cut black girl’s dreadlocks.” Third, it gave the “woke” media another chance to virtue-signal by reminding viewers that, as NBC put it, “the school bars employees from engaging in or condoning ‘homosexual or lesbian sexual activity’ and ‘transgender identity’” — as if raking the school and Karen Pence over the coals for this offense against modernity in January weren’t enough.
On Monday, however, Amari confessed that she had fabricated the whole tale, and she and her grandparents met with school officials to apologize.
According to WRC, “During the investigation of the girl’s accusations, security camera video showed where people were at the time of the alleged attack, the family’s attorney said, and it became clear the girl’s account could not be true based on the day and time she said it happened.”
“We just started to find little pieces that weren’t adding up,” attorney Michael Daniels said. “So as we continued to, you know, kind of press through this and we started to look at the tapes, we started to look at the statements and we actually asked Amari about it and she finally just kind of said, ‘Yeah, I made that up.’”
Amari is a straight-A student who plays the violin and has attended Immanuel Christian since kindergarten. No one is sure just yet why she invented the alleged attack, although she claims she really is being bullied at school.
“Everybody is incredibly sorry that this all went down the way that it did,” Daniels said. “They’re starting to look at a path forward, and that involves a lot of counseling and therapy and open discussion.”
The school released a statement confirming that Amari had admitted her allegations were false. “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,” read the statement. “We recognize that we now enter what will be a long season of healing.”
Amari’s grandparents also issued a statement apologizing to the accused boys, the school, and the community. “We understand there will be consequences, and we’re prepared to take responsibility for them,” they said. “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.”
Image of Amari Allen: Screenshot of a foxnews.com video
