Church-Run School Ordered to Readmit Girl, 17 : Ouster of Student for Modeling Swimsuits Upset

A judge today ordered a church-run school to readmit a 17-year-old girl expelled two months before graduation for modeling swimsuits in a department store fashion show.

The restraining order was issued by Circuit Judge James Llewellyn as a result of a lawsuit filed by attorneys for Machelle Outlaw.

On Thursday, the school had offered to readmit Outlaw if she would promise to stop modeling swimsuits until after her graduation, but she refused.

Outlaw’s parents said they were outraged at the action of the pastor in charge of Goldsboro Christian School, sponsored by the Second Baptist Church.

“Eleven years she was there and two months before graduation they expelled her without even so much as giving her a chance,” her father, Robert Outlaw, said.

Machelle Outlaw, a school homecoming queen, said she was taken by the school principal to the office of the Rev. Tom Harper, pastor of Second Baptist Church, and was told “they had a bad report on me, that I had modeled a bathing suit in a window in the mall.”

She said she told Harper she had not modeled in a window but in a secluded area of the women’s department.

“Then he asked me if it was a one-piece or a two-piece,” she said.

“He said I was putting a bad influence on the school because I was revealing my body. That’s basically what it boiled down to.”