An Illinois student from Naperville Central High School has been sentenced to probation after listing one of his Black classmates as a slave on Craigslist in 2019.
DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert B. Berlin announced in a statement on Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021, that the unnamed male student has been sentenced to two years of probation and 100 hours of community service.
According to the statement, the student pleaded guilty to two counts of felony hate crime and one count of misdemeanor disorderly conduct on Sept. 1.
The student who was found guilty took a picture of the victim at the lunch table in November 2019. The student then uploaded his classmate’s photo on Craiglist and captioned it “Slave for sale (Naperville),” followed by an offensive racial slur.
The statement did not name either student, but the perpetrator was described in 2019 reports as a 14-year-old White freshman at Naperville Central.
In a 2019 interview with the Black student’s mother on WGN-TV, she told the news station that the two students were once friends until the other student began making fun of her son’s skin color and saying things like “shut up, slave.”
Judge Anthony Coco also ordered the juvenile offender to undergo individual or family counseling and submit a DNA sample to the state’s DNA database.
