A new lawsuit by a former student from the Fairfax County Public Schools alleges that the school district turned a blind eye to horrific sexual abuse in a middle school in 2012, with staff members showing more compassion for an alleged attacker than for the victim.
As reported in the Daily Wire, the allegations have come to light a decade later because the victim waited until she was an adult to sue and the case has been in the courts for the last three years. The explosive claims against Fairfax County Public Schools were revealed in a newly filed amended complaint and paint a disturbing picture of gang activity and sex trafficking in the area.
The events occurred when the girl, identified in court papers as B.R., was a 12-year-old student at Rachel Carson Middle School. One of her alleged attackers was an eighth-grader called only C.K. in court papers, while other alleged attackers were unknown men who allegedly gang-raped her in a closet in the school after C.K. bragged that he was grooming her for “friends” who would “make a lot of money” off of her, the complaint says.
The complaint says that C.K. waited for B.R. at the bus stop after school, brandished a knife, and “led Plaintiff to a secluded nearby area outside where he wrestled Plaintiff to the ground, held her there against her will, removed her clothing, and forced Plaintiff… to perform oral sex.” Similar events occurred on a near-daily basis for several days, until the girl’s mother heard a voicemail message in which her daughter’s tormentor crudely threatened to sodomize her, according to the complaint.
Although it was before the alleged gang rape and the girl had not yet told her parents the extent of the abuse she had allegedly endured, her parents went to school officials in February of 2012 to complain of persistent sexual harassment in the school halls, the voicemail from C.K., and so claim that C.K. had stolen $50 from B.R. Officials allegedly brushed her complaint aside.
“Assistant Principal S.T. told Plaintiff and her parents that C.K. ‘had a very hard life and been in enough trouble,’ and asked Plaintiff and her mother why they were trying to ‘ruin a young boy’s life,’” the complaint states.
Assistant Principal S.T. then visited C.K.’s home, where his mother told him that he was “borrowing” the $50. After that conversation, the assistant principal told B.R.’s parents that it appeared to be a “boy girl thing” in which B.R. was “sexually active” with C.K. The assistant principal returned the $50 while laughing that B.R. should take it back before she spent it on Christmas shopping herself, the complaint says.
The abuse got worse after she went to school officials, culminating in a student dragging her into a closet in the school building after school where she was “raped by three unknown males (Mike Roes 1 – 3) consistent with the modus operandi of human and sexual traffickers in the Fairfax community,” the lawsuit alleged.
In February 2012, B.R.’s parents began keeping her home from school, and she disclosed the full extent of the alleged sexual abuse. On March 5, her parents went to the police and spoke with Detective Fred Chambers – the former School Resource Officer for the middle school — who directed her to take a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (“SANE”) evaluation which “revealed she suffered contusions inside her anus thereby corroborating her report of rape and sodomy,” the suit says.
Yet the detective went on to accuse the girl of making a false rape accusation “despite his knowledge of corroborating evidence,” the complaint says. School officials began investigating the alleged victim, the complaint claims.
“Under the guise of a school investigation, and in the course and scope of his authority as principal of RCMS, Principal A.F. visited Plaintiff’s elementary school to dig up ‘dirt’ on Plaintiff,” it says.
FCPS had a pattern of downplaying sexual misconduct so that the school system’s statistics looked better, the complaint says.
“In effect, FCSB had a policy, custom, and practice of sweeping student-on-student sexual violence and sexual harassment under the rug,” it says.
Schools also required to disclose certain incidents in a statewide database. Loudoun County acknowledged failing to report to the database properly after The Daily Wire pointed out that both the infamous bathroom rape and an earlier well-known locker room incident were missing.
In response to the claims, the Fairfax County School Board told InsideNoVa that it takes the allegations very seriously but said, “The allegations made today differ significantly from those reported to the school at the time.”
In a release, advocacy group Shatter the Silence Fairfax County Public Schools said the school system “has a serious and substantiated pattern and practice of mishandling sexual assault and abuse. The school board, with its cover-up and retaliation culture, cannot be trusted to reform itself.”
The group, which works to fight sexual abuse, harassment, and discrimination in the schools, is asking the U.S. Department of Justice and the Virginia Attorney General’s office to intervene in making schools safer.
Their call for Attorney General Miyares’s office to do something is a similar situation to his offices’ involvement in the Loudoun County Public School situation, where a special grand jury was put together by Governor Youngkin, and headed up by Miyares to investigate the botched handling of a sexual assault case that rocked Loudoun County Public Schools. Hopefully his office can lend hand in seeking justice for these horrific crimes this lawsuit alleges.
