N.B. student says she was victim of transphobia at high school in Dieppe
Sixteen-year-old Noemie LeBlanc says the bullying pushed her to the point of trying to take her own life last week.
“I was followed to my class being screamed at, “It,” she said.
The Grade 11 student, who attended Mathieu-Martin High School, says the bullying has been persistent for the past two school years.
“They would just harass me and were like, ‘Oh what is in between your legs,” she said.Her mother, Jolyne LeBlanc, says the harassment started last year when students shared a picture of Noemie throughout the school as a boy. She says the school did nothing but send her daughter home upset and alone in a cab
“I said, ‘Do you guys have a plan when stuff like this happens?’ And [the school] answered, ‘No.'”
So she pulled her daughter out of school for the remainder of the year, hoping the school and the district would develop a plan to help better support transgender students who are transitioning.
But come the start of the next school year, Noemie says the taunting continued and some teachers insisted on calling her by her former name.
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“When they read my name, they literally said Patrick,” she said.
She says a substitute teacher even tried to make her play on the boys team in gym class instead of with the girls.
“It was like, ‘You are a boy you are going on that side,’ so I ran out of the class and I sat in the bathroom crying,” she said.
Last week, Noemie tried to take her own life in the bathroom next to her bedroom and since then, she’s has been sleeping on the couch because she is too afraid to sleep upstairs. She also hasn’t been back to school.
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“They still haven’t done anything so I had to remove her again,” said Jolyne.
No one at the school was available for comment, but school administration says they have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to bullying.
Jolyne says she is meeting with the school later this week in hopes that staff and students can become better educated about transgender rights, so that her daughter can return to class and feel safe and supported.
“Something needs to be done so that she can live a normal life. She has rights like everybody else,” Jolyne said.
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