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Student says assistant principal showed her obscene pictures

DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — A controversy is brewing in a DeKalb County school after an elementary school student said she was shown an obscene picture by an assistant principal.

That administrator is accused of showing Azure Dasgupta, 11, a naked picture of one of her classmates.

Dasgupta's mother said the assistant principal then tried to bully her daughter into admitting that she sent them.

"And then she said, 'Did you do this?' and she just made me feel like I did something wrong," Dasgupta said.

Dasgupta is a fifth-grader at DeKalb Elementary School of the Arts.

Monday, the assistant principal called Dasgupta to the office to ask about inappropriate pictures that had been texted to another student.

Dasgupta said the administrator then showed her pictures of the private parts of one of her male classmates.

"When she first showed me, I was like, 'ew,' and I turned away, and I didn't want to see that because I knew it was something bad," Dasgupta said. "She wanted me to say that I did it and I was trying to tell her that I didn't do it."

The family said another parent discovered the images on their daughter's cellphone and that Dasgupta's name was falsely attached to the number that sent the images.

Dasgupta's mother is upset because the school didn't call her immediately, plus she said the investigation has been botched from the beginning.

"I don't know why that wasn't the first thing that was asked -- 'What is your phone number?' Because when I talked to the parent, that was the first thing that we resolved, 'You know what? It's not even your child's phone number,'" Sarquetta Grayer, Dasgupta's mother, said.

The DeKalb County School System issued a statement saying, "These allegations are of serious concern to the school district. The office of internal affairs began an investigation early today to determine if district policies and procedures were followed. Based on those findings, the district will take action as appropriate."

"It's so inappropriate that she needs to either resign or she needs to be removed from her position at this time," Mawuli Mel Davis, the family's attorney, said.

"She did apologize; she said she dropped the ball. She didn't mean any ill intent," Grayer said.

"Maybe my parents didn't want me to see this. Maybe my family wasn't ready for me to know about this stuff," Dasgupta said.

There is no word on if any disciplinary action will be taken against that assistant principal.

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