FLORIDA -- A Florida parent says her daughter was being bullied at school after rumors spread that the 11-year-old was pregnant, and her stomach just kept getting bigger.
Janet Roberts said she has lived by a rule learned from her mother.
"Our mom always told us never judge a book by its cover," said Roberts, "and see what she meant with this situation that happened with my daughter."
Roberts said her 11-year-old was the target of a wicked rumor in school.
"I did not know. I was the last one to find out," she said.
She said she found out when the school called her in for a meeting and told her the rumor around the school is her 11-year-old is pregnant.
Roberts said she tried to squash it because her daughter felt she was being bullied or harassed, but she noticed the child had an extended stomach and wanted to be sure.
"The tests were negative," said Roberts.
But the mother of four noticed her daughters stomach continued to grow.
"I tested her every two weeks and it was negative," she said, "then I said 'if you're not pregnant something is going on here.'"
In August 2012, she had just turned 12 and it was three months after the rumors began. Roberts said her child looked like she was five months pregnant, so they took her to another doctor. It it turned out to be a tumor growing in her body.
"It was 19 pounds, well 20 pounds in size, but the thing was by how small she was they had to drain it two liter bottle of it before they could pull it out of her," says Janet's mother.
It was benign, non cancerous, but there is concern that it will return, and Roberts says her daughter now needs counseling.
"She has a hard time dealing with what happen to her so she's writing notes about what happened and how the people treated her," says Janet's mother.
She’s still trying to come to grips about what was said, and what was discovered in her body.
"Before you judge a child by how he or she looks get to know that child," says Janet's mother.
