Well, it’s possible that they’re assuming reports of the principal having done these things are either being made up by the girls in question or by biased reporting. I mean, were I convinced of a person’s general rightness of character (as the resident quoted in the OP apparently is), i’d tend to assume stories of them doing something so obviously wrong to be merely stories, especially when the same stories lambast him for a position I think is right.
Revenant Threshold that kind of benefit of the doubt only works if the person so accused is fighting the accusations. I see nothing in the article to support the interpretation that the person involved is denying the descriptions of what he did. Including the strip searches.
Now, there’s certainly room to believe that the denial has been made - it’s only a brief article, and focusing more on community reaction than the case itself. But without any explicit claim in that direction I have to admit I think that the former principal has agreed to the description of what he did.
This is plausible – barely – especially if one assumes the general social conservative/ roughly Baptist belief system of “average” Southerners – by which, as a transplanted Southerner myself, I don’t mean a broad-brush tarring of all and sundry, but rather a basic Zeitgeist, a social standard held by a large proportion of many communities.
For clarification (and lest you get Pitted yourself as a hijack), can you please define “a position I think is right”?
The description of his lifting girls’ shirts is a direct quote from the judge’s ruling in the case:
Ergo, either he admitted to it, or the evidence presented in the case was more persuasive than his denials.
OtakuLoki has a good point.
In this case, that “homosexuality is wrong”. It is not something that I would assume of being a standard held by a large proportion of many communities. I’m suggesting only that is is a possibility since the two quoted people in the OP who both back up the principal both explicitly support him and his, well, principles.
Edit:
… to the judge.
I think a lot of people underestimate the number of conservative Christians that don’t “believe in” homosexuality that are out there. Tucson has a national reputation for being diverse, tolerant, and hippy, yet I hear at least weekly comments from people I know or work with condemning and degrading gays. Do you realize how many people still think people choose to be gay? That this could happen is in no way a surprise to me.
Methinks there’s been a lot of progress over the past 30 years, never mind the past 40.
Ponce De Leon is located in northern Florida, part of the deep south. Yet I see from the article that the student has a number of gay friendly supporters in her class – organizing protests no less – and this seems unexceptional.
A contrast. In the very early 1980s, the Village Voice noted that homophobia was the last socially acceptable form of bigotry – and the lefty writer was discussing his Manhattan social circle. At the time, even linking “Scorns gays” with “Bigotry” was an ultra-liberal sentiment - one that tended to piss off moderates.
Props to the student’s friends for their decency, loyalty and guts.
True enough. When I first started at my new position last year, a former coworker (a stranger to me) had sent the unit a wedding announcement and picture: two black women together. They looked happy to me. The amount of comment this engendered was surprising (at least to me). People are so strange. I can’t see how it matters who you fuck.
Indeed. I grew up in these sorts of towns in good ole’ Yankee Pride PA.
Quick question. If one of the girls in question hauled off and slapped this creep in the face when he tried to lift up her shirt, would she have a case for self defense?
Not to go off-topic and although I haven’t researched this, but I’ll bet they don’t teach evolution in that school. 
No, Florida now requires the teaching of evolution. There was an article in the NYT today about it.
Nothing like a happy send-off, eh?
Aren’t you moving to Texas soon?
My wife and I are contemplating moving to Texas when she retires, yes. For me it will be a homecoming of sorts since I was born there but left in 1963 and haven’t been back since, although I did change airplanes there a couple of times. Even if I do go back, that doesn’t change the fact that there continues to be a lot of bigotry on the loose there as well as some of the most idiotic politicians to ever breathe.