By Michael Morrah
WARNING: Video contains pictures which some might find disturbing.
A 14-year-old school girl is in hospital with spinal injuries after being attacked on school grounds by a group of fellow students at Flaxmere College in Hawke's Bay.
The brutal beating was filmed on a cellphone and three girls have since been expelled from the school.
But the girl's mother says her daughter could have been killed, and has criticised school staff for not calling police or an ambulance in the aftermath of the fight.
A warning the pictures in this exclusive story are disturbing.
Adriana Kemp's spine is fractured. She's in Hawke's Bay hospital in pain, and will face weeks of rehabilitation.
It was interval at school. In the video, Adriana is the one in the blue jersey, her attacker in the white.
Adriana is eventually forced to the ground. The attack continues, only this time another girl joins in.
"I cant believe that anything like this would happen at school," says her mother, Moana Hawkins. "You trust your children to go to school to be looked after, and it just didn't happen."
Ms Hawkins has been at the hospital's children's ward with her daughter every day since it happened.
"It was bad enough finding out she got attacked, but when I saw the video, I broke down. I would not wish that on any mother to see what I saw."
She says on the day the fight happened, she got a text message.
"We were getting ready for prizegiving, it was her prizegiving, we were about 20 minutes away when her dad got a text message saying she got gang-bashed, come down and pick her up."
Ms Hawkins says she's angry at the school's lack of action after the assault.
"I asked them if they could ring police – they said I had to. I said we should call an ambulance, and they said I should take her to the doctor's, so I was pretty angry at that, really angry."
The school's principal says an ambulance wasn't called because Adriana's family arrived quickly and said they'd take her to A&E..
But that isn't good enough for Ms Hawkins. She says her daughter won't be going back to the college, and while her daughter had planned to spend Christmas with her grandma, it's likely she'll be in hospital.
3 News
source: newshub archive
