West Virginia’s attorney general filed a civil rights injunction against a school district he that failed to report sexual assault claims and then retaliated against the girls who reported the abuse.
According to the injunction, which was filed this week by Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and the state Human Rights Commission, two West Virginia boys repeatedly sexually assaulted girls at their school, but school administrators helped them to cover up the assault by punishing their victims and obstructing a law enforcement investigation.
The injunction was filed against the Mingo County Board of Education, where sexual assaults took place.
The injunction alleges that “multiple girls” were “subjected to repeated incidents of sexual abuse and/or sexual assault by two fellow male students, and then threatened with discipline and/or retaliated against by members of the Burch Middle School administration when each pursued punishment for the offenders.” It describes claims by two girls who were 13 at the time, and it says “additional victims exist.”
The assaults, which happened in school, on field trips, and on the bus, started in 2012, but the latest assault was just over two weeks ago, on April 21.
Attorney General Morrisey filed the suit in the Mingo county circuit court on Thursday against the Mingo county board of education, five of its employees and the two minors accused of the assault, along with their parents. The employees named in the suit include the Principal, Vice Principal, Superintendent, athletic coach, and even the guidance counselor at the school.
Both boys named as perpetrators in the injunction are relatives of members of the school board there. One of the victims said that during one assault, one of the boys told the other: “Don’t worry, [your relative] will take care of us.”
According to the complaint, the principal at Burch Middle School advised one of the victim’s parents not to call police, saying she “would take care of it.” Almost a year later, the parents learned the school had not called the police.
At one point, one of the victim’s mothers met with the fathers of the accused abusers, and the principal and an athletic coach — who for some reason attended the meeting. According to the complaint, the father of one of the boys said his son had admitted to the abuse, and he apologized for his son’s actions. The coach then said that, because there were no witnesses, the victim “could not prove a thing.” The principal and the coach then threatened to discipline the girl if she further complained about abuse that occurred without witnesses, it says.
The Attorney General’s complaint also found that statements the daughter had been asked to write about what happened to her, were treated without care: One went missing, the other was apparently shared with a father of one of the boys, and with the relative who worked within the school system.
Another case, in which a victim was “forcibly penetrated” by one of the boys, was never investigated by law enforcement either, according to the complaint.
The county board of education still has not formally asked for a law enforcement investigation. The only discipline in either case doled out by the school were two days of suspension and denying the boys an ice cream break during a school event.
“The two male students have avoided criminal investigation, prosecution, or meaningful punishment due to the actions and conduct of the administrators and teachers at Burch middle school and the Mingo county board of education,” Morrisey said in the suit. “Instead of a meaningful investigation by the school, upon information and belief, the female victims have been disparately treated and punished, while the alleged male perpetrators have been ‘taken care of’.”
Meanwhile, the girls were reprimanded for various school infractions while they or their parents participated in the investigation. This school year, administrators moved one of the girls to the seventh grade because one of the boys was in her eighth-grade classes — but the boy stayed in his age-appropriate classes. One girl was given two infractions — one for “bullying” because she blocked a girl on Facebook, another for “insubordination.”
The school also at one point refused to let officers onto the premises to get testimony from a third victim.
Burch Middle School principal Melissa Webb told a state trooper investigating the allegations he could no longer take statements from students on April 24 because “it disrupted the learning environment.”
The attorney general’s office became involved after receiving a referral from the state Human Rights Commission. Morrisey’s office launched an investigation and reported the claims to the state police, said attorney general spokeswoman Beth Gorczyca Ryan.
State police spokesman Lt. Michael Baylous said the agency’s Crimes Against Children Unit is investigating at least one incident.
“The investigation of these crimes are a priority to us and we all need to take it serious and when there’s an allegation this has occurred, it’s very important this allegation be investigated thoroughly,” Baylous said. “That’s what we’re going to do it. We’re going to investigate it thoroughly and hopefully get to the bottom. Everyone should be alert and report these crimes as soon as they’re made aware of them. “
While the assaults were happening at Burch Middle School, parents of one of the victims noticed that their daughter was acting “withdrawn” and “anxious,” according to the complaint. She “suffered crying spells,” they said, and would respond to concerned questions from her parents by saying, “nobody understands” or “it doesn’t matter.”
Unfortunately, that’s the impression our society gives victims of sexual assault — that it doesn’t matter. While the details of this case are different, what happened to the girls at Burch Middle School is part of a disturbing trend of covering up sexual assaults to protect perpetrators at the expense of victims. The same behavior was seen in the case in Steubenville, Ohio, where several members of the school’s championship football team were given the benefit of the doubt, despite videotaped evidence that they had raped a female student. And in Maryville, Missouri, charges were inexplicably dropped against the high school boy who raped classmate Daisy Coleman — but advocates point to the boy’s connection to local politicians as a likely cause of the lack of punishment.
Then there was Rehtaeh Parsons, who was photographed by classmates as she was being raped by four males at a friend’s home. Despite the photographic evidence, police never brought charges against any of her attackers. Rehtaeh killed herself after enduring more than 6 weeks of bullying from classmates and former friends.
The sexual assault crisis on college campuses is also drawing increased attention, and allegations of cover-ups are at the center of several ongoing investigations. Just this week, Johns Hopkins University was accused of covering up a gang rape that took place in a fraternity house on campus. This came only days after students at DePaul University, the nation’s largest Catholic university, publicly accused the school of engaging in a cover-up to conceal sexual assaults on campus.
The problem also extends to our nation’s military, where high-ranking officials are accused of stifling support for sexual assault reform. Even within the criminal justice system, sexual assault is often minimized or overlooked completely. Even when perpetrators are prosecuted, judges still hesitate to hand down more than the minimum punishment.
It is this culture that has contributed to the prevalence of sexual assault in our society. The same cultural problem is also what makes victims hesitate to report their experiences of sexual assault, which is why up to 95 percent of sexual assaults among young women go unreported.
The consequences of these societal trends are dire. Research shows that sexual violence has become a normal part of young women’s lives — and one to which they’ve become accustomed. And the perception — and reality — that their assaults won’t be taken seriously makes victims doubt whether they should come forward at all.
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