When I saw the whole story, I really felt like I was seeing my own school. There is this coach from Virginia named Travis Turner whose charges are very serious concerning children. Instead of people being angry with him, most of them turned their anger towards the cheerleaders and their clothes. This felt strange because the one who ran away is a grown man; he is not a little kid.
A woman, namely Rozina Edwards Branham, kept quiet for almost a week; she said she was feeling sick reading some of the comments online. People in Rozina’s hometown were blaming the teenage girls rather than the coach, who had left his own family and fled. I have seen this kind of thing before, where adults protect other adults but judge students for everything they wear or say.
Finally, Rozina snapped even, uploading real screenshots taken from the comment section. Others blamed the cheerleaders for the length of the skirts and therefore reasoned that men would misbehave. Reading that really annoyed me; something like this can be heard from old people when they say similar things about school affairs: the clothes a girl has are responsible for her problems, even when she never really did anything wrong.
Someone even said the dress lures men. It sounded stupid because all of these cheer uniforms have looked almost the same for many years. Clothes do not make someone become a predator. The person chooses that on their own. Rozina kept saying that people should stop blaming the kids, especially since Turner is over forty and fully knows what is right and wrong.
She also asked a good question. Well, if you are innocent, then why would you run? For me, if someone accused me of doing something this serious, I’d straight up go to the police. I’d whip out my phone, my laptop, everything, just to show I hadn’t done anything. Anyone would do that if they were truly clean. It’s just that the part really makes sense to me: whenever a kid is accused of cheating or stealing in school, he or she usually fights back with all his or her might. They do not disappear.
What worried Rozina the most was how, most of the time, people talked about the girl or girls he may have hurt. Cheer skirts and students were all busy blaming one another instead of thinking about the possible victims. I tried imagining how it must feel for those kids. They have to go back to class and see adults and students who said things like they asked for it or they dressed wrong. Even normal gossip in school feels heavy. Something like this would be ten times worse.
Rozina said this attitude is what causes children to stay quiet when things go wrong that happen to them. They think that adults are going to blame them rather than the person who hurt them.
Police believe there may be more charges, and Turner is still on the run. Rozina ended by saying he should turn himself in and face what he did. I agree with her. People should stop blaming the wrong side and start focusing on keeping kids safe. You may also be interested in: Aberdeen Football Coach Reacts After Player Moves To Montesano During His Mom’s Cancer Fight
