Graduation is just a few months away for Destin Holmes, a Mississippi high school senior who never thought she’d make it after years of brutal bullying for being a lesbian.
Her lawsuit against Moss Point School District reached a settlement last week following a two-year fight over allegations that faculty and students labeled the now-18-year-old student a “dyke,” “freak” and “pathetic fool.”
“I had no hopes of graduating,” Holmes told the Daily News. “I didn’t care if I went to college. I’d would have rather stayed at home versus going to school and getting verbally attacked.”
The school district has agreed to train its staff, change its policies and pay out an undisclosed sum after a federal lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center called for compensation and an injunction on harassing behavior.
The district added sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression to its protected civil rights and equal education opportunity policy as part of the agreement.
The abuse that followed her from Magnolia Junior High to Moss Point High School left her in tears during classes especially after hearing anti-gay slurs up to 20 times a day, her lawsuit said.
“As soon as I thought the day was going good, in the blink of an eye it turned into something terrible,” Holmes said.
She dropped out to be homeschooled for one year, but had to come back due to expenses. When she expressed suicidal tendencies in the classroom, the school’s mental health caseworker finally intervened, but to no avail, the suit claims.
Holmes is obtaining a GED at the same school district named in her 2013 lawsuit to make up for all the lost education. She feared she couldn’t graduate for at least three more years.
In her GED class, which has only a handful of students, Holmes has no interaction with the students or faculty she says repeatedly called her an “it” and “he/she” either.
“Even though it was rough to go through, I can still make something out of it,” Holmes said. “I’m just ready to move on.”
She’s waiting to apply for colleges until after she has graduated, but when that time comes, Holmes wants to study forensics and criminal justice. The CBS show “NCIS: New Orleans” played a role in that inspiration, she said.
The district’s new procedures for handling bullying will ideally prevent further bullying among students who face social stigmas like she did. Her complaint details other students at the school district that also faced harassment for sexual orientation and gender identity bias.
