Plan to use teen as bait leads to rape at school, suit alleges
(CNN) -- It's an unimaginable horror. A 14-year-old girl with special needs allegedly was raped at school after a teacher's aide persuaded her to act as bait to catch an accused sexual predator, a fellow student.
"It has essentially devastated her life," attorney Eric Artrip -- who represents the girl and her father -- said of the alleged January 2010 incident.
The Department of Justice and U.S. Department of Education filed an amicus brief Wednesday supporting her family's federal lawsuit against the Madison County School Board in Alabama.
An amicus brief is a legal argument offered to the court by someone who is not a party to the case. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta will decide whether to accept the argument.
"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 boy and his alleged sexual partner denied having sex in the bathroom, but Simpson recommended the boy be "constantly monitored," according to the brief. Blair said the boy could not be punished because he had not been "caught in the act," the brief reads.
School policy requires allegations of student-on-student misconduct be substantiated.
Trying to "catch him in the act"
On January 22, 2010, the boy approached a 14-year-old girl with special needs who had already declined his "recent, repeated propositions" for sex, according to the brief.
"She was not physically or mentally handicapped, although she does qualify for special education classes," Artrip told CNN.
When the girl told Simpson, she encouraged the girl to "meet (the boy) in the bathroom where teachers could be positioned to 'catch him in the act' before anything happened," according to the brief.
The girl initially refused, but then agreed, according to Artrip.
Simpson and the girl went to Dunaway's office to explain the plan. Dunaway "did not respond with any advice or directive," according to the brief.
"If this was problematic for the administration it would have been better to express that on the front end instead of the back end," said attorney McGriff Belser III, who represents Simpson.
The girl left Dunaway's office, found the boy in the hallway, and "agreed to meet for sex," according to the brief.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/20/us/alabama-school-rape-lawsuit/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
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