Either Atlanta filmmaker Tyler Perry’s fictional alter ego “Madea” has gone to Clayton County, or somebody’s been watching too many of the brash and outspoken character’s movies.
In the tradition of “Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail,” 59-year-old Marvis Renae Henry was arrested earlier this week for delivering what police described as an expletive-laced threat to a Forest Park Middle School student she said was bullying her great-nephew.
Henry claims she didn’t curse at the boy, but she admitted she would do what she needed to do to protect the child she has adopted and calls “son.”
“I did say, ‘If you put your hands on my child, I will mess you up, your momma and your whole generation,’ ” Henry told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution via phone early Thursday evening.
She was charged with disorderly conduct and disrupting school operations, and released Thursday on $5,000 bond.
According to the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office arrest record, on March 19, Henry went to the school and asked her son to point out the boy who had been bullying him.
She was supposed to leave the building, but instead confronted the alleged bully in the hallway, making a promise to him similar to the one she admitted, deputies said, but with a vulgar term in place of “mess you up.”
The alleged bully told sheriff’s deputies her actions and statement made him fear for his safety, according to the arrest warrant.
Henry said she was appalled with what was happening to her son, noting that the bully allegedly tried to push her son down a flight of stairs and worse.
Henry said her son had begun being bullied more and more and her complaints to the school officials fielded no response or change.
“Until I went up to the school, they weren’t going to do anything,” she said. “I had to bring it out so somebody would do something.”
School officials could not be reached for comment Thursday evening.
The Atlanta Technical College student and Sunday school teacher said she refused to stand by and do nothing.
“I’ll sit outside that school and give him my phone and make him call me whenever there’s a problem, if I have to,” Henry said. “I’ll go to jail again.”
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