Student 'Bait' Raped After Teacher's Aide Suggests She Help Capture Sexual Predator
A 14-year-old student's family is suing Sparkman Middle School after she was allegedly used as bait to catch an accused sexual predator and raped in the school's bathroom.
"It has essentially devastated her life," attorney Eric Artrip, who represents the victim and her family, told CNN.
In 2010, the girl, who has special needs, told a teacher's aide that she had been approached repeatedly by the accused assailant for sex. June Simpson, the aide, decided to set a trap for the abuser, using the 14-year-old student as bait. She managed to convince her to "meet the boy in the bathroom where teachers could be positioned to 'catch him in the act' before anything happened," court documents stated.
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While the student initially declined to participate, she later agreed to help. Unfortunately, though, things went very wrong. After telling the young man that she would meet him for sex, the two met in a different bathroom, where there were no teachers to intervene.
"She stalled for time. She continually tried to fight him off but ultimately was anally raped by this young man," Altrip told CNN. "It was evident that this had been a severe trauma for her."
The girl was traumatized, and doctors found evidence of a condition "consistent with (the victim) being sodomized," the brief stated. She refused to speak about what had happened, making it difficult to bring charges against the boy. However, the school did suspend him for five days for "inappropriately touching a female in boys' bathroom," and sent him to an alternative school. He returned to Sparkman after 20 days.
According to the Department of Justice and the Department of Education, the boy had a history of at least 15 violent or sex-related proven incidents before the alleged rape. They cannot prove anything, though, because school administrators shredded the boy's disciplinary files.
"A school board cannot avoid summary judgment as a matter of law when a school administrator willfully ignores a plan to use a 14-year-old special needs student as bait to catch a student with a known history of sexual and violent misconduct, and as a result, the student is sodomized," a brief filed by the Justice Department read.
"We hope that the attention that this case is getting will spur a movement on these kinds of policies so that a girl can simply report sexual harassment without having a need to bring a witness with her or roll up her shirt and show bruises," Altrip said.
Since the incident occurred, the 14-year-old girl was removed from Sparkman Middle School and moved in with her mother in North Carolina, where she received extensive counseling. Unfortunately, her mother died not long after the move, and she and her brother were placed in Child Protective Services.
The teacher's aide who came up with the idea, June Simpson, resigned not long after the alleged rape. Her lawyer insists that she had the best of intentions and is a "scapegoat" in the ordeal.
