PARIS- In March of last year, fourteen-year-old Shaquanda Cotton was sentenced to 7 years in prison for shoving a white hall monitor at her Paris, Texas school. The adult monitor says he was not seriously injured.
Shaquanda is a first time offender. She has no prior arrest record. She did cause no serious injury, but that didn’t matter.“A 19-year-old white man, convicted last July of criminally negligent homicide for killing a 54-year-old black woman and her 3-year-old grandson with his truck, who was sentenced in Paris to probation and required to send an annual Christmas card to the victims' family.”
She is a victim of a juvenile justice system out of control in Texas and a corrupt juvenile and education system in Paris Texas and Lamar County that deliberately tees off on Black parents and intimidates activists trying to change the conditions of Black people in Paris-Lamar County.
The tragedy of Shaquanda is that many Black children and parents have been abandoned by sell out Blacks and inactive Black pastors who are doing nothing to demand better for Black children.
Shaquanda has fought being separated from her mother, TYC drug induced treatment and spends her days and nights at Brownwood Prison trying to stay out of reach of the 2,500, murders, robbers, sex offenders and other violent, habitual offenders she is imprisoned with. She has tried to commit suicide to escape her nightmare.
Just three months earlier, the same judge who sentenced Shaquanda sentenced a 14-year-old white girl, convicted of arson for burning down her family's house, to probation.
"Sometimes I feel like I just can't do this no more--that I can't survive this," Shaquanda says.
Brownwood prison is currently at the center of a state scandal involving a guard who allegedly sexually abused teenage inmates.
Shaquanda does not belong in this environment and must be released and returned home to her mother ASAP!!!
Who will be outraged!!! Who will step forward and demand an end to this abuse?
No comments:
Post a Comment