Virginia Teacher Charged With Assault: Student Claims She Was Cut While Being Forced To Make An Islamic Hand Sign
Virginia teacher Tara Harris was charged with simple assault after allegedly injuring a student while aggressively teaching the child how to make an Islamic hand sign. The girl’s mother maintains her daughter’s hand was cut open after Harris yanked her arm during the classroom lesson.
Stephanie Bennett, the 10-year-old student’s mother, claims the Butts Road Intermediate School incident was part of a disturbing trend of “indoctrinating” students with Islamic teachings. Bennett also maintains that the educator “openly campaigns” for President Barack Obama in the classroom setting, SBY News notes.
Chesapeake Police Department spokesman Officer Leo Kosinski had this to say about the charges filed against Tara Harris:
“It’s still a criminal charge. It happened at the school and it involved a student.”
The injured student reportedly suffers from a processing disorder, which makes it difficult for her to grasp new things. Bennett had this to say about the alleged classroom happenings which led up to her daughter’s injuries and the disorder during an interview with The Blaze:
“The teacher was going over Islamic hand signs with the children, she stayed on this issue for two days straight during their math and reading class. Not that she’s uneducated or anything. It’s just a processing problem. When she didn’t get it right, Harris went over and yanked her hand out of her desk and my daughter’s hand got hung up on the metal wire on her file folder and the skin got caught on it. The other children saw my daughter’s hand dripping with blood after the teacher had gotten so mad that she went to twist my daughter’s hand into the Islamic sign.”
Other students in the classroom reportedly confirmed the injured student’s story. Harris allegedly prayed in Arabic approximately five times per day when students were in the classroom. According to Bennett, school officials called her earlier this week to inform her that Tara Harris had been terminated. Earlier this month, a Chesapeake Public Schools assistant principal was arrested on charges of abduction, attempted robbery, burglary, assault, and battery, WAVY reports.
