Folsom school district found responsible for disabled student’s sexual abuse on school bus
.jpg "The Folsom Cordova Unified School District has been ordered to pay a family $1.7 million in damages after they sued the district for their failure to intervene in a child perpetrating abuse on their child.")
A Sacramento jury found Folsom Cordova Unified School District responsible for a disabled student’s repeated experience of child-on-child sexual abuse on a school bus. The district has been ordered to pay the family $1.7 million in damages.
The complaint, filed in 2019, alleged that an adult special education student repeatedly sexually and emotionally abused the then 12-year-old plaintiff on the bus on the way to a summer program at Cordova High School in June 2018.
Two bus drivers, who are considered mandated reporters under California law, allegedly witnessed the abuse and did not report the abuse to the authorities.
A jury found Folsom Cordova Unified fully responsible for the sexual abuse last month.
Lawyer Roger Dreyer, who represented the student’s family, said that it was a purposeful move to seek a jury trial rather than accepting a cash settlement where the school could have avoided taking responsibility for negligence.
“It was very important for my client that the school district had to deal with the accountability of failing this 12-year-old special needs child,” he said.
The plaintiff’s mother Sharon, who requested her last name not be used to protect her child’s privacy, said that winning the case did not provide consolation for what happened.
“When the jury found them negligent, I did weep and I thought I would feel this huge sense of relief, that now they’re accountable, but it doesn’t make it go away,” she said. “It can’t undo the damage that it caused.”
What happened
The plaintiff and perpetrator, who were six years apart in age, were both special education students attending a Folsom Cordova Unified summer school program at Cordova High School. Court documents allege that the older student took a liking to the plaintiff and began sitting next to him on the bus frequently. The abuse reportedly began June 6, 2018.
On June 22, surveillance video shows that the standard bus driver asked a bus driver-in-training to keep an eye on the two students. The driver said that something suspicious and “nasty” was happening. The trainee sat behind the students the following Monday and proceeded to separate them after seeing the older student grope the plaintiff’s chest and groin.
The trainee filed an incident report later that day with the district’s transportation dispatcher, but did not report her suspicion of abuse to law enforcement or Child Protective Services.
The student came home that day emotionally distraught that he was separated from his new friend. The next morning, the student’s mom received a call from the school district’s transportation dispatch about the incident and was told that her son and “his friend” were “rubbing against one another.”
After she and her husband contacted the police, they were informed that the other student was not another middle schooler, but 18 years-old, and that the older student groped her son. They later came to learn that their son was also being assaulted on campus.
Sharon felt that the school misled her about the nature of the relationship between her cson and the older student, and that had there been proper supervision, the school would not have allowed the two to become close.
“(The bus drivers) formulated a plan to catch them instead of just moving them, which should have happened from the very beginning,” Sharon said. “It never should have happened. There should have been an aid on that bus since day one.”
The perpetrator was suspended and later arrested on school campus in relation to the events with the younger student, but the criminal case was dismissed in 2020 after it was determined that he was not competent to stand trial.
Sharon said that throughout the following six years, she felt consistently lied to by school district administrators, who she said downplayed the abuse. In November of this year, a jury found the district 100% responsible for the harm Sharon’s son suffered.
Six years later, Sharon said that her son is still suffering from the abuse, and likely will for the rest of his life.
“Yes, you could say we won, but in reality we didn’t win. We lost,” she said. “Because my son lost a piece of himself, because his innocence has been taken … . There’s nothing to undo the damage caused.”
Mandated reporting practices
Folsom Cordova Unified spokesperson Angela Griffin did not say whether any staff members had been disciplined or dismissed in relation to this incident, but did speak to the district’s responsibility to students.
“Our top priority is always the safety and well-being of our students,” she said. “Every decision we make is guided by this commitment.”
Sharon took the case to trial rather than accepting a settlement so that the school district would be held accountable for negligence. However, ultimately prevailing in court did not feel like a win.
“If there was adequate supervision, this wouldn’t have happened,” she said. “And if it would have been reported and they followed the law, then it would have stopped whatever was going on before it escalated.”
In California, all school district employees are considered mandated reporters. All mandated reporters are required by law to immediately report all known or suspected cases of child abuse to law enforcement or CPS. The school bus drivers involved in the case did not report their suspicion to authorities.
Sharon’s son, who was involved in the case, is the oldest of several of her adopted children with disabilities. Her other children are currently attending Folsom Cordova Unified schools, but she still takes issue with the district’s mandated reporting and communication practices. She said that her children have had teachers who have different perspectives on the mandated reporting law and that the district needs to have better auditing processes to make sure school staff members fully understand the law.
“You can write a policy but if there’s no auditing to make sure your staffing is delivering on that policy and procedure…” she said. “We’ve all been in trainings where you have a deadline so you race through it to get it off your plate and you don’t understand the responsibility that comes with that training, and in this case it affects children’s lives.”
Dreyer said that he has represented clients in similar situations and advocates for school districts to employ improved mandated reporter training so that abuse can be more readily addressed on school campuses.
“We get a lot of lip service that they work hard to protect these kids, but when the rubber hit the road, they failed him miserably,” Dreyer said. “Until school districts take (mandated reporter training) seriously and dedicate to actually training people and then reporting them, it’s going to continue.”
Griffin said that all school district staff are required to participate in annual training on mandated reporting at the beginning of each school year, and that their current protocols and training process were in place at the time of the incident.
This story was originally published December 3, 2024 at 1:31 PM.
