Teen Raped After Being Used by School as "Bait"

If a high school student goes to administrators to report that she and another teenage girl were raped by a boy at the school, you might think that the immediate course of action would be to keep the survivors safe while investigating the allegations. But a student at Upper St. Claire High School is suing her school district for using her as bait, which resulted in her being raped a second time.

It's possible that the principal had watched The Sting a few too many times and thought that he could launch his own tricky operation. Even so, to put a sexual assault victim in the path of her rapist seems like an absurd level of endangerment — except that Principal Michael Ghilani didn't believe that he was dealing with a rape survivor. Instead, he turned the rape victims into guilty parties, deciding that student were having consensual sex on school premises after hours, and he wanted them all caught.

Instead of having the girls safely escorted to their bus, as the teacher to whom the crime was first reported wanted to do, Principal Ghilani kept them on school grounds and tasked the school police to follow them — in order to see if they went somewhere to have sex, rather than to watch out for their well-being. The police apparently thought everybody had gone home, but were mistaken, since two girls reported being raped in the stairwell that afternoon.

Why the principal would think that the girl would report on herself having consensual sex is beyond me. In the school district's attempt to defend its gross negligence, it argued that these girls were just jealous of other girls having sex with the boy in question. The boy himself, by the way, has pleaded guilty to sexual assault, although not to rape, and faces up to four years imprisonment.

Cara writes on the Curvature, "I’m honestly not even sure which facet of this case I find most appalling — the lesson that if you report being raped to your school, they’ll use you as a method to catch other students doing allegedly naughty things rather than protecting you; or the lesson that if you report being raped to your school, they’ll respond to their own culpability in the situation by telling the national media that you wanted it, anyway."

The lawsuit further states that the school knew that the boy was sexually harassing and assaulting girls the month before this incident took place, but did nothing. The school also failed to report any rapes occurring for the year's Safe Schools Report, which suggests that the administrators might have chosen to perceive the attacks as consensual in order not to have to admit the lack of safety in their hallways. Why guarantee the security of your students when you can just present the appearance of security?

Photo credit: kevindooley