Key takeaways A 13-year-old Louisiana girl was expelled for more than 10 weeks after attacking a boy who shared AI-generated nude images of her on a school bus. Two male students have been criminally...
A Louisiana middle school became the center of a deepfake controversy after a 13-year-old girl was expelled for attacking classmates who were sharing AI-generated nude images of her, while the boys accused of creating and distributing the images faced no apparent school discipline.
The incident at Sixth Ward Middle School in Thibodaux, located about 45 miles southwest of New Orleans, began on August 26 when the eighth-grader and her friends reported to a guidance counselor that explicit AI-generated images were circulating on Snapchat. The images showed the girls' faces superimposed on nude bodies.
Joseph Daniels, the girl's father, described the imag
es as deeply disturbing. "It's disturbing. Those pictures are horrible. They're extremely explicit, and they look real. You cannot tell the difference," he told CBS News.
He further characterized them as "full nudes with her face put on them."
Despite repeated pleas for help from school staff and a sheriff's deputy assigned to the school, the adults struggled to find the images, which were shared on Snapchat, an app that automatically deletes messages after they're viewed.
Principal Danielle Coriell expressed skepticism about whether the images even existed.
"Kids lie a lot," Coriell said at the girl's disciplinary hearing, according to the Associated Press. "They lie about all kinds of things. They blow lots of things out of proportion on a daily basis. In 17 years, they do it all the time. So to my knowledge, at 2 o'clock when I checked again, there were no pictures."
School board member Valerie Bourgeois confirmed that when the girl asked to call her father, school officials refused, saying "we're not calling parents at this time," according to a video of a November school board meeting.
By the end of that school day, frustration reached a breaking point. When the 13-year-old boarded her bus, she saw a classmate showing the AI-generated images to other students.
"That's when I got angry," the girl later testified at her disciplinary hearing.
The girl slapped the boy twice before climbing over a seat to punch and stomp on him, according to school officials.
Two other students joined in the attack. "I went the whole day getting bullied and getting made fun of about my body," the girl explained at her hearing.
The district expelled her for 89 school days and sent her to an alternative school. The girl had no prior disciplinary problems.
Meanwhile, according to her attorneys, the boy she accused of sharing the images transferred to a different school but avoided the alternative school placement or expulsion.
"She went for help not once, but twice," attorney Matt Ory told the school board at a November hearing. "The people who were supposed to protect her did not protect her, so she protected herself. And when she did, she was expelled."
At the alternative school, the girl struggled significantly. Her father reported that she stopped eating meals and couldn't concentrate on her schoolwork.
"She kind of got left behind," Daniels said in an interview with the Associated Press. He arranged therapy for her depression and anxiety.
While the girl faced immediate school discipline, criminal charges took longer to materialize.
Three weeks after the fight, the Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office charged one male student with 10 counts of unlawful dissemination of images created by artificial intelligence.
In December, a second boy was charged with identical counts. Neither was publicly identified due to their ages.
The charges stem from Louisiana Senate Bill 6, which took effect in August 2024 and makes it illegal to share or sell AI-generated images of someone without their consent.
A conviction can result in up to six months' imprisonment or a $750 fine.
The sheriff's office stated the girl would face no criminal charges because of the "totality of the circumstances." The investigation ultimately uncovered AI-generated nude images of eight female middle school students and two adults.
Experts say the Louisiana case highlights how unprepared schools are for the growing threat of AI-generated deepfakes targeting students.
"Most schools are just kind of burying their heads in the sand, hoping that this isn't happening," said Sameer Hinduja, co-director of the Cyberbullying Research Center and professor of criminology at Florida Atlantic University.
Sergio Alexander, a research associate at Texas Christian University focused on emerging technology, emphasized the pattern of delayed institutional response.
"When we ignore the digital harm, the only moment that becomes visible is when the victim finally breaks," Alexander said.
The Lafourche Parish School District was just beginning to develop AI policies when the incident occurred. According to documents obtained through records requests, the district's AI guidance mainly addressed academic uses, and its cyberbullying training curriculum dated from 2018, predating the widespread availability of AI deepfake tools.
Louisiana State Representative Laurie Schlegel, who serves on a newly formed state task force on AI in education, stressed the urgency of the issue. "AI isn't just at our doors; it's already in the house," she said.
According to a recent study by Thorn, a nonprofit child advocacy group, one in 17 children nationwide has fallen victim to AI deepfake pornography.
At least two dozen states have introduced legislation to criminalize sexualized photos of children created with artificial intelligence, according to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
After the family's attorneys appealed the expulsion, the school board held a public hearing on November 5.
Board member Henry Lafont acknowledged the complexity of the situation: "There are a lot of things in that video that I don't like. But I'm also trying to put into perspective what she went through all day."
The board allowed the girl to return to Sixth Ward Middle School on November 7, but she remains on probation until January 29.
The probation prevents her from participating in school dances, sports, or other extracurricular activities. She already missed basketball tryouts, meaning she cannot play this season.
Superintendent Jarod Martin defended the school district's handling of the case, stating in a November board meeting that "sometimes in life we can be both victims and perpetrators."
The district released a joint statement with the sheriff's office saying it followed all protocols for reporting misconduct and that a "one-sided story" had been presented.
Attorney Benjamin Comeaux, who represents the family along with Gregory Miller, Matt Ory, and Morgyn Young, characterized the school's response as compounding the trauma.
"This girl was abused," Comeaux said, noting she endured sexual exploitation and harassment. The expulsion "was like pouring salt in the wound."
The family plans to file a federal lawsuit against the Lafourche Parish School District. The district has declined to discuss the disciplinary records of other students, citing federal student privacy laws.
Daniels said the experience has devastated his daughter's eighth-grade year.
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