The guardian of a 13-year-old girl is suing the Long Beach Unified School District on her behalf, alleging that administrators at John Muir K-8 Academy failed to take proper measures to prevent a male student from sexually assaulting her on campus.
“Kids have a constitutional right to a safe education and this is just unacceptable,” said Eric G. Rudin, the plaintiff’s attorney.
A spokesperson for the LBUSD declined to comment specifically on the pending litigation but said “any allegations of this nature are taken very seriously.”
The lawsuit alleges that the girl, who is identified by a pseudonym in the lawsuit, was attacked by the male student in May after she was granted permission to leave class because she was feeling sick.
While she was headed to the administrative offices to be picked up by her parent, the male student called her name, began walking with her down a stairwell and started making sexual advances, according to the lawsuit.
When the girl rejected his advances, the lawsuit says, he moved her into a blind spot in the stairwell, grabbed her by the throat, knocked her to the ground and sexually assaulted her. The lawsuit does not identify the alleged assailant or say how old he was.
It’s not clear whether the incident was reported to police at the time or investigated by the school. A spokesperson with the LBUSD did not immediately respond to additional questions from the Long Beach Post. Police told the Post they could not locate a case based on the limited information information in the lawsuit.
As a result of being sexually assaulted, the 13-year-old girl suffered “extensive physical, psychological and emotional damages,” according to the lawsuit.
The attack should have been prevented because the assailant was known to have a history of causing problems at the school, according to the lawsuit.
It alleges that LBUSD for many years knew of the threat that the male student posed not only to the 13-year-old girl but to other students on campus.
The male student’s behavior had gotten to the point that teachers and administrators at Muir Academy created a text message chain to alert one another when he had been out of his class for more than five minutes, “at which point they were to alert security,” the lawsuit says.
“LBUSD’s administrators and teachers created a haphazard text message chain, effectively crossing their fingers and hoping for the best,” the lawsuit states. “Unfortunately, on the fateful day that Plaintiff was victimized, hoping for the best was not enough.”
The lawsuit, filed Sept. 19, seeks unspecified damages for the district’s alleged negligence.