(NEWSER) – A 16-year-old Rhode Island atheist has her heavily Roman Catholic town of 80,000 in an uproar after she successfully sued her school to take down a eight-foot-tall prayer that hung in the school auditorium for 49 years, reports the New York Times. One state representative called Jessica Ahlquist “an evil little thing,” there have been threats, and police have escorted her to school. “I was amazed,” said the co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which has given Jessica $13,000 from support and scholarship funds. "We haven’t seen a case like this in a long time, with this level of revilement and ostracism and stigmatizing."