A lawsuit has been filed against an Alabama middle school that accuses teachers and administrators of directing a girl to put herself into a dangerous situation in order to “catch” her predator in the act. Instead of protecting her, they abandoned her to be sexually assaulted.
The middle school allegedly tried to use a young student as “bait” for an older student who was suspected of being a sexual predator. After forcing the girl to lure him into the bathroom, the teacher in charge of this amateur (and highly illegal) sting operation left the school for the day, leaving the student with the boy who proceeded to rape her.
The boy’s threat of violence and sexual assault was not unknown to school staff. According to CNN:
“School administrators knew the student’s extensive history of sexual and violent misconduct and were alerted to the substantial risk he posed” to other students, according to the brief.
About a week before the alleged rape, Sparkman Middle School vice principals Jeanne Dunaway and Teresa Terrell received a complaint that the boy had touched a female student inappropriately and was assigned in-school suspension, according to federal attorneys. A few days later, June Simpson, a teacher’s aide at the Huntsville-area school, told the principal, Ronnie Blair, that the boy had “repeatedly tried to convince girls to have sex with him in the boys’ bathroom on the special needs students’ corridor” and had actually had sex with one student, according to the brief.
The school did nearly everything wrong upon learning that a girl was being continually sexually harassed by this boy. According to a lawsuit, rather than move immediately to put an end to the victimization, the girl’s teacher up an elaborate sting operation to “catch him in the act.” This involved asking the girl, who is described as having special needs, to lure her attacker into a school bathroom while her teacher watched from a distance. “Don’t do anything. Just get him to meet you and we’ll catch him,” the teacher allegedly instructed the student.
According to police records, the teacher even told school administration about her plan, and while they didn’t actively encourage it, they also didn’t tell her no.
Unfortunately, the terrible plan was even more poorly executed. The teacher said she watched the bathroom for a while during the agreed upon time, but didn’t see the girl or the boy enter so she simply shrugged and left school. Meanwhile, the girl had gone to a different bathroom and while in there, she was assaulted by the boy.
A doctor confirmed that the girl showed signs of having been raped, but the teacher felt no responsibility for what happened. The school even tried to defend itself by saying the student probably consented to the sex, despite the clear evidence that she had approached a teacher beforehand and asked for help.
Having been informed that the girl was assaulted, the school still did nothing. According to CNN, Dunaway testified that the girl “was responsible for herself once she entered the bathroom.” It was her fault because she put herself in that bathroom. The place, if you recall, she was only in because the teacher had told her to go there or the harassment wouldn’t stop.
Amazingly, not only did the “sting operation” backfire and lead to further victimization, the school didn’t see anything wrong with what had happened. The girl dropped out of the school and her family eventually moved out of the state, but the boy was hardly punished.
