Advertisement SC school board member asked to step down following Facebook post referring to sex assault Education activist group calls post 'offensive, inappropriate, insensitive, and beneath someone who has the responsibility of caring for...children' Share Shares Copy Link Copy

A South Carolina education activist group is calling for an Horry County school board member to step down following a controversial Facebook post.According to a press release from the Horry County Alliance for Educational Justice, Sherrie Todd, member of the Horry County School Board, "shared" a post that stated: "I've already decided that whoever wins the Democrat Nomination in 2020 sexually assaulted me 40 years ago."The release goes on to say: "The Horry County Alliance for Educational Justice finds this post to be completely offensive, inappropriate, insensitive, and beneath someone who has the responsibility of caring for the most vulnerable citizens of Horry County: our children. Mrs. Todd's endorsement of this post betrays her gross lack of consideration of the lived reality of our fellow citizens, including children, who are survivors of sexual assault.According to the South Carolina Coalition against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, 'nearly 1 in 5 women and 1 in 71 men report being raped during their lifetime. In addition, 45.9% of South Carolina women and 17.8% of men in our state report being victims of sexual violence or coercion other than rape.'According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 'Of all female victims of completed rape, 41% reported that it first occurred prior to age 18…Of all female victims of completed rape 30% reported that their first such victimization occurred between the ages of 11 and 17… Before the age of 18, 8.5 million women first experienced rape.'Additionally, Mrs. Todd's willful approval of a Facebook post that makes light of falsely accusing someone of sexual assault is blatantly inconsiderate of South Carolina's awful history of Black men and boys being targets of vigilante violence and extrajudicial killings as a result of false allegations of rape and other forms of sexual violence.In spite of Mrs. Todd offering what we consider a half-hearted apology that ultimately passed the responsibility to others for the post being shared, we call Mrs. Todd's judgement, sensitivity, and integrity as a school board member into question. Therefore, we find that the appropriate course of action Mrs. Todd should take is to resign from the school board immediately."Todd posted an apology to her account that read: "It was just brought to my attention that there was a post on my account that was completely out of my character and offended people that read it. I had several young people at my home during the hurricane is all I can say. Please accept my apology from the bottom of my heart."WMBF News has reached out to the Horry County Board of Education and has not heard back at this time.