Rumors were flying at a Jacksonville, Florida elementary school that an 11-year-old girl was pregnant. Students teased and bullied the poor girl, and when school officials called her mother, Janet Roberts, to inform her of the accusations, Janet was shocked. How in the world could an 11-year-old be pregnant?
The girl told her mother that she was being bullied and harassed, but after her daughter's belly continued to grow, Janet became suspicious and gave her a pregnancy test. Test after test, though, turned up negative. So what the heck was going on?
Janet said she tested her daughter every two weeks after her stomach just kept on getting bigger, and bigger, until finally, she realized that something just wasn't right.
This wasn't your normal pre-teen growth spurt.
Janet took her daughter to the hospital and discovered some unbelievable news. The girl had a 19-pound tumor in her stomach. She may have looked five months pregnant, but what was growing inside her certainly wasn't a baby.
Doctors removed the tumor and are keeping an eye on the girl, since they're worried it might come back.
Janet says her daughter is in counseling, trying to deal with all the bullying she endured as rumors mounted that she was pregnant. Can you imagine how traumatic this experience must have been? Her innocence was questioned, her reputation was "ruined", and at the end of all of that school hazing, she had to have a massive tumor removed from her tiny body.
You really never can judge a book by its cover, and I hope the kids at her school learned that lesson. They made her life so awful because they thought they knew more than they did. You know what they say, assuming makes an asshole out of you and me ... as if an 11-year-old with a stomach tumor didn't have enough to deal with.
Here's to a healthy recovery!
How do you talk to your kids about not judging a book by its cover?
Photo via Parker Knight/Flickr
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Comments 135
I'm really trying not to get all judgy, but I have to wonder why this 11-year-old's mother didn't take her to the hospital to find out what was wrong as soon as her stomach was growing but the pregnancy test was negative. If you're far along enough to be showing, you're far enough that if you were pregnant it would come back positive. Why did she wait so long, particularly since tumors are a pretty well-known cause of abdominal swelling and that would seem to be a common-sense culprit?
Her mom tested her every two weeks? Seriously? She didn't think maybe she should take her baby to the hospital, because even if that poor girl was pregnant, it would mean she was raped, which would mean she should go the hospital on the way to the police station anyway. I'll judge the mother plenty in this case.
why wouldn't she have taken her daughter to the dr before this after the first couple pregnancy tests???
Absolute fail on the mother's part. Like other said, I hope she has other adults to turn to.
My mom had the same thing happen to her as a teen. She had a growth on her ovary that caused her horrible menstrual pain, but her mother didn't believe her and thought it was normal cramps. Eventually the tumor grew and she began to look pregnant, and my grandmother FINALLY took her to the doctor because she thought she was pregnant. She had a football-sized tumor and her ovary removed. Yikes.