CHUH school district sued for alleged failure to respond to sexual abuse

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Cleveland, several current and former students in the Cleveland Heights-University Heights school district allege the school failed to properly respond to allegations of sexual misconduct.

The allegations come from five anonymous people. The oldest allegation, dating from 2012, concerns inappropriate touching of a kindergarten student by another kindergarten student. The most recent, from the 2019-2020 school year, resulted in a 16-month district investigation that concluded the accused violated the district's sexual harassment policy. At that time, the accused had already graduated.

“We're basically talking about a decades-long period involving these five individuals,” said Eric Long, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys. “This is one of the most significant lawsuits dealing with the pervasiveness and complete lack of compliance within a local school district.”

The suit, filed Wednesday in the Northern District of Ohio, names as defendants the school district, the school board, the superintendent, two administrators, two principals and five John Does, who may have worked for the school system.

The complaint alleges that the district violated Title IX, the 1972 federal law aimed at achieving gender equity in education and which requires any school receiving federal aid to take steps to protect students against sexual misconduct.

In a statement, Superintendent Elizabeth Kirby said the district takes its Title IX responsibilities seriously.

“CH-UH schools are committed to putting in place the resources and processes necessary to respond promptly, thoroughly and fairly to allegations of Title IX violations,” Kirby said.

She listed several steps the school has taken since 2022, including hiring a full-time Title IX coordinator, adopting a “consent-based curriculum” for middle and high school students, and providing training an advisory committee on Title IX issues that includes students, parents. and staff.

Read the district's full response at the bottom of this story.

The allegations

The lawsuit describes five separate incidents that occurred at Fairfax Elementary School, Roxboro Middle School and Cleveland Heights High School, all located in Cleveland Heights.

The plaintiffs allege that the school either failed to conduct a thorough investigation or delayed too long in concluding the investigation and, whether or not the investigation was completed, failed to take required steps to respond to the concerns of the accusers.

In the kindergartener's case, the student's parents say they notified the school after a classmate put his hands down his pants at school and during recess. According to the complaint, the parents requested that their child be moved to another class, which the school denied.

“There are reasonable accommodations that could be made without a five-year-old being found responsible for sexual harassment,” Long said. “There are things that can be done to ensure that (the accuser) is safe and comfortable and, frankly, has access to the education that he is entitled to.”

The lawsuit alleges that none of these steps were taken. The child, identified in the complaint as John Roe 3, was allegedly allowed to stay next to the girl, identified as Jane Doe 3, during naptime after the class change request was denied. The lawsuit alleges the behavior continued.

Her parents, not identified in the complaint, decided to homeschool their daughter until the 5th^th grade. When they tried to re-enroll her in a district school five years later, they discovered that John Roe 3 attended the same school. They asked if she could attend another school, but the request was denied, the complaint states.

“The district superintendent's secretary told (the girl's mother) that Jane Doe 3 should be 'over' the incident by now, as it happened five years ago, and they had not no trace of the previous incident,” the complaint states. .

District's response has changed over the years, plaintiffs say

According to Long, the district's response to the allegations has changed over the years. In 2012, no investigation was carried out, but years later when other According to the lawsuit, investigations were carried out, inadequate, delayed and did little to improve the accuser's learning conditions.

“One of the reasons this lawsuit is important is we need to put these schools on notice that they have these obligations,” Long said. “Unfortunately, this is one of the ways that we can get people to wake up and realize that this is a problem both within families, students and the community, but also within the schools themselves.”

In another incident at Roxboro Middle School during the 2015-2016 school year, a 14-year-old allegedly sexually assaulted an 11-year-old identified as Jane Doe 1 in a closet behind the school auditorium. school.

The main suspended the alleged victim for engaging in sexual conduct on campus, and no more Measures have been taken by the school.

“At the time, Jane Doe 1 was eleven years old and did not know what ‘consensual’ meant, nor did she have the legal capacity to ‘consent’ to sexual contact,” the lawsuit states.

In more recent cases, a Title IX coordinator has been assigned to address concerns. The lawsuit alleges the change did little to improve results.

A Title IX coordinator is responsible for coordinating a district's efforts to comply with Title IX, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

The mother of one of the plaintiffs, identified as Jane Doe 4 and a freshman at Cleveland Heights High School at the time of the alleged incident, filed a formal complaint with the district's Title IX coordinator on 7 June 2021.

The complaint accuses a CHHS sophomore, whose mother and mother's boyfriend were coaches of district sports teams, of raping her daughter outside of school a year and a half earlier.

Ideastream was unable to independently verify the details of the rape allegation because the defendant's name is not included in the lawsuit.

It took the district investigator nine months to complete his investigation, according to the complaint. During this time, the defendant was allowed to continue attending school without restrictions and worked at a girls' sports camp, according to the release.

On September 21, 2022, the district found that the defendant had sexually harassed Jane Doe 4. In its decision, the district did not consider her allegations of off-campus misconduct, including the alleged rape. By the time the board made its decision, defendant had already graduated from high school.

Long said these alleged failures of the district have been discussed publicly for years, including at district board meetings and other public events, and he believes the five families involved in this lawsuit are just the tip of the iceberg.

“These families are very brave and came forward,” Long said. “They certainly don't have to, and a lot of them have left the district and are now in college or doing something else, but really want to use this platform to make sure that it's not something something that can continue to happen in a district that they lived in and cared for.