At the age of 14, most teenagers are enduring their freshman year of high school and dealing with normal teenage activities, but that was not the reality for ShaQuanda Cotton. In 2007, at the age of 14, Cotton was accused of assaulting a White teacher’s aid at Paris High School. Cotton, who is Black, was faced with seven years at a detention center for assaulting a public servant. This caused an outcry since a 14- year old white girl had recently committed arson, but she was only given probation. Both teens had the same judge.
So what happened that morning when ShaQuanda was denied entry into the building to visit the nurse’s office, and how has it impacted ShaQuanda’s life? We sat down to discuss the series of events and how life has been since she returned home.
Shaquanda says the morning was like every other morning. "I was going in and take my medication, as I usually do every morning after I eat breakfast. On this particular morning, the hall monitor was at the door, and the first- I believe the first bell had just wrong, so I was asking to go in the building. I was trying to go into the building, and she (the teacher’s aide) asked what I was doing. So I told her I needed to go to the nurse to take my medication. She starts to yell at me and say, I wasn’t “coming into the building and that the bell had already rung.”ShaQuanda says she began to walk away from the door but then noticed that the teacher’s aid was about to allow another group of students who were white into the building. However, she had just blocked ShaQuanda and her friends from entering moments before. So she and her friends then turned back around to ask why the other girls were allowed in the building. ShaQuanda explains that she was between two sets of doors and not quite in the building when the aide started screaming again, saying that she (Shaquanda) wasn’t coming in.
“She started walking towards me, pushing me backward onto the people that were behind me. And so about the third time she came towards me, I just kind of put my hands up like this (ShaQuanda raises her hands in a defensive position), and she pushed off of my hands. But my hands never extended. So at this point, it’s a lot of commotion going on. Another male teacher came out to assist her in getting me out of the building in which he was shoving me out. I hit my head on the middle door, and I had a pencil in my hand, so the pencil has stuck in my hand,” ShaQuanda explains. “After that, they told me to go to the office; I went to the office and sat in the principal’s office for maybe two hours. They wouldn’t let me call my mom. They wouldn’t let me out of the office. I didn’t know what was going on. I was just kind of sitting there waiting.”
The 30-year old ShaQuanda says the first thing she said when her mother arrived was, “Check the camera!” Unfortunately, the camera system, which was run by the family of someone on the school’s staff, was not working. Shaquanda and her family believe this was a lie, but why would they lie about such a thing? ShaQuanda and her family think that she was targeted as the child of an activist.
The 14-year-old was arrested and taken to the Paris Police Department that day. She was almost taken to the detention center then, but the probation officer at the time requested that the juvenile be released to the care of her mom. That decision allowed ShaQuanda to go home until her trial.
Ultimately, ShaQuanda was sentenced to seven years in a juvenile detention center, but she did a year and three weeks at Texas Youth Commission (TYC). Her stay there kept being extended as she had time added on for other matters, like not admitting to the offense, getting an extra cup for her medication, and wearing an extra pair of socks.
Upon returning home from TYC, Shaquanda feels her life was never the same. When asked how she thought that it had been impacted, she gets emotional. “I am more reluctant to socialize with people, being around people, trusting people. I have anxiety, depression- it’s changed everything for me,” the now thirty-year-old says. She tearfully adds, “I never got the proper healing.”
The mom of three says she cannot get a job because she stays depressed, but she has now written a book, Memoir of a Teacher Slapping B#!@%: I Am ShaQuanda Cotton, to tell her side of the story. The book titled was inspired by a remark Shaquanda overheard a former coworker make. When asked what she wants others to take away from her book, Shaquanda says, “First, I just want them to know the truth about everything that's happened because I never really just talked about it. I was pretty much silent after I came home because I didn't want to deal with anything else. I was just glad to be back with my family, so I just kind of kept going, but I want to acknowledge the truth.”
Memoir of a Teacher Slapping B#!@%: I Am ShaQuanda Cotton is available for sale now through Lulu, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other book retailers online.
