Thursday, April 09, 2009

Muslim girl gets $400,000 from Nevada school district in headscarf bully case

$400,000 for schoolyard bullying -- and with no proof, and no description of the alleged threatener! Do you think Jana Elhifny had some high-priced legal support from Islamic advocacy groups? If she actually received any death threats, that is abominable, and even worse if school administrators did nothing, but the amount of the settlement here and the lack of any substantiation whatsoever of Elhifny's charges suggests that the main point of this case is not that students deserve not to be threatened and harassed in school. "Muslim Girl Gets $400G From Nevada School District in Head Scarf Bully Case," from FoxNews, April 8 (thanks to Philip):

A Nevada school district agreed to pay $400,000 to a Muslim girl and her friend over allegations that other students threatened to kill her in the stairwell for wearing a religious head scarf and the staff did nothing to stop it.

The Washoe County School District in the Reno area will give Egyptian former student Jana Elhifny $350,000 and her non-Muslim friend and supporter Stephanie Hart $50,000 as part of the civil settlement.

Elhifny and her family came to Reno from Egypt in 2003, and the girl enrolled as a freshman at North Valleys High School.

She didn't finish the year after she told teachers and administrators that someone had threatened to kill her in the stairwell because of her Muslim hijab or head scarf, the district's independent attorney in the case, Robert Cox, told FOXNews.com.

Shortly afterwards, Cox said, Elhifny filed the lawsuit and returned to Egypt, where she married her fiancé.

The lawsuit, handled by U.S. District Court in Reno, alleges that Elhifny faced death threats and harassment and school administrators did nothing to stop the abuse.

Cox said that wasn't true, and the teen was unable to give any description of her tormenter — including his or her gender, size and tone of voice.

He said the high school tried to investigate her claims but was unsuccessful because of the lack of information.

"The district did an incredibly thorough investigation," Cox told FOXNews.com in a phone interview. "They could never identify the person who perpetrated these acts. ... The district did everything it could do to try to help this young woman who is an Egyptian and of the Islam faith."

Cox said school officials couldn't confirm the stairwell death threat story.

"They tried to prove that, tried to track down who it was, but without a description ... that couldn't be done," he said. "The district did watch her constantly and had people in the hallway."

He said the settlement was agreed upon to end lengthy and "expensive litigation." The case has been fought in the courts for the past four years, according to Cox....

Thanks Jihad Watch

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