How deepfake nudes of a Louisiana teen led to her expulsion from 8th grade
Back in August, a 13-year-old girl was expelled from her middle school after she confronted and hit a boy who was allegedly sharing deepfake nudes of her and other girls. Now, her family is speaking out, saying the school and the district did nothing to address the problem.
In an interview with CBS News published Friday, the girl’s father, Joseph Daniels, described the images as “disturbing” and “extremely explicit.”
“Those pictures are horrible,” Daniels said. “They’re extremely explicit, and they look real. You cannot tell the difference.”
Victim expelled from school
According to Daniels, deepfake nudes of his daughter and other girls started circulating among boys at Sixth Ward Middle School on Aug. 26. Daniels’ daughter reportedly told school officials about the images, but they failed to act.
As a result, the 13-year-old decided to confront one of the boys on the school bus, and wound up smacking him on top of his head, video of the incident shows. Two male students were also seen in the video hitting the boy who allegedly had the photos on his phone.
In a joint statement published Thursday, Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre and Lafourche Parish School Superintendent Jarod Martin said that after the video of the altercation was shared on Facebook, the “overwhelming social media sentiment was one of outrage,” with the school community calling for those involved in the fight to be “held accountable.”
In response, the school expelled Daniels’ daughter during what was supposed to be her final year of middle school. The boy, meanwhile, was transferred to another school.
“She’s tough, but, you know, mentally it does play on her,” Daniels told CBS News, adding that his daughter suffered from depression and anxiety following the incident. “To me, her eighth-grade year was pretty much ruined, which is her last year in middle school.”
As of last week, Daniels’ daughter was allowed to return to school. However, she will be on probation until January, effectively barring her from activities such as sports and school dances.
District, sheriff’s office respond
Sixth Ward Middle School and Lafourche Parish School District (LPSD) pushed back on the allegations, saying officials, including the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office, immediately launched an investigation but could not find the images or evidence of them.
“Consistent with established policy, several students were interviewed and parents were contacted during the course of the day regarding the allegations,” the district and sheriff’s office wrote in their statement. “Despite everyone’s best efforts, by the end of the school day, investigators had not been successful in locating any image or any evidence of the existence of the images.”
Despite failing to turn up the images themselves on Aug. 26, a subsequent investigation into the “creation and dissemination” of the images was launched. According to the joint statement, detectives and school resource officers searched students’ phones and found deepfake nudes of eight female students at the school, as well as two adults.
One boy has been criminally charged, while charges against a second “are possible,” the statement explained.
“In investigations involving school incidents, criminal charges can, but do not necessarily, play a factor in disciplinary actions,” LPSD and the sheriff’s office added. “Regardless, both public agencies are committed to protecting the privacy and legal rights of the children involved.”
What happens next?
The Daniels family now plans to file a federal lawsuit against the school district, CBS News reports.
“There’s no doubt that this is going to be a growing trend because we live in a world where 13-year-olds can get access to these kind of software, and in a heartbeat, do this to their peers, and the public needs to be made aware of this because it’s growing and it’s going to get worse and worse,” Greg Miller, the family’s attorney said.
Miller’s warning about the increasing number of students using artificial intelligence to generate deepfake nudes of their classmates is supported by evidence. Nearly one year to the day before Daniels’ daughter found such photos of herself, tech company Thorn released a report detailing the problem.
In August 2024, Thorn published a survey of more than 1,000 students ages 9 to 17, which found that 11% had friends or classmates who used AI to generate deepfake nudes of their peers. Another 10% of students refused to answer the question.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
