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Family To Home-School Victim Of Videotaped Attack

Polk County Sheriff's Office

These are the teenagers accused in the attack.

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By JEFF PATTERSON

News Channel 8

Published: April 8, 2008

LAKELAND - The 16-year-old girl shown on a home video while she was attacked by a group of teens will be home-schooled, her mother said today.

"How can she go back and be victimized, because she's going to hear the talk," Talisa Lindsay said. "Right now she still has a lot of bruising to her face. How can she go back and feel all that humiliation again?"

Her daughter, Victoria Lindsay, will be home schooled for the rest of the year, she said.

Lindsay attended Mulberry High School, where she was on the honor roll and the varsity cheerleading squad, her mother said.

"She'll never be herself," Talisa Lindsay said. "I mean, how can you have something like this happen and say, 'I am the same person.'?"

Victoria Lindsay was staying at the home of a friend, Mercades Nichols, on March 30 when several other girls gathered at the Lakeland house. The six teens, who all attend Mulberry High School, confronted Victoria Lindsay about trash-talking them online, the Polk County Sheriff's Office said.

Lindsay told investigators that she was punched and beat repeatedly by the girls. The incident was recorded on video the teens planned to post on MySpace and YouTube as retaliation, investigators said.

"You've got to have some sort of warped mind in a sense to think it's entertainment to get the snot beat out of you," Talisa Lindsay said. "I think it's trash. Simple trash that people want to feed off of and it's sick."

Victoria Lindsay has a concussion, hearing loss and blurred vision, her family said.

"She still has problems hearing out of the left ear," Talisa Lindsay said. "The left eye still has a lot of swelling, but we do hopefully see that her vision will get better with time. She's recovering."

The sheriff's office has charged eight teenagers in the attack, six girls whom investigators say took turns beating Victoria Lindsay and two boys whom they say acted as lookouts. All are charged with felony battery and felony false imprisonment.

Christina Garcia, the mother of 17-year-old Mercades Nichols, denied that her daughter beat Lindsay.

Lindsay "embarrassed these girls," Garcia said. "She said she was going to kick their you-know-whats," and called them "slutty."

Talisa Lindsay said she was not aware that animosity existed between the girls.

"You try to be involved in their lives as much as you can, but you can only get what they want to share with you," she said. "Some of these I've known of, I've spoke to, so it hurts. There is a deeper hurt there for me."

Polk Sheriff Grady Judd said he wants to prosecute the attackers as adults. Talisa Lindsay said she empathizes with the other families.

"I think that justice needs to take its course," she said. "I feel for the families, I really do. Because I'm trying to think of what I would feel like if the shoe was on the other foot."

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