Report: Victims of rampant abuse at Mission Hill School as young as 5
Bullying and sexual assault by student ‘without effective intervention’ took place repeatedly in single-student bathroom
Children as young as 5 for years were the victims of pervasive sexual abuse and bullying at Mission Hill K-8 School in Jamaica Plain, according to a stunning investigative report that led Boston Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius to recommend that Mission Hill close at the end of the academic year.
The school committee will vote on her proposal at a special Zoom meeting next Thursday at 5 p.m. after reading the 189-page report, commissioned by the superintendent last year and written by the Boston law firm Hinckley Allen after its investigation.
The report came out this past week, and a thorough reading of the full nearly 200 pages reveals disturbing allegations.
”What has emerged is a picture of a failed school, one that largely hid behind its autonomous status and the philosophical ideals of MH Admin 1 and MH Admin 3, often to the detriment of the Boston Public School students it served,” according to the redacted report, which identified administrators as MH Admin, faculty and staff as MH Staff, and so on.
The report cited one child — “MH Student 1” — who it said repeatedly sexually abused other students in a one-person bathroom and elsewhere in the school.
Rather than immediately reporting the incidents to the state Department of Children and Families, as required by law, staff initially suggested putting bells on the bathroom door, stationing an intern outside the bathroom or having two adults accompany Student 1 at all times.
These actions led to “troubling patterns of unsafe sexual behavior, bullying and physical violence to continue unabated,” the report said.
In October 2014, MH Staff 3 documented finding MH Student 1 “several times” in the single-student bathroom with another child. Over the following month, MH Staff 3 documented five additional incidents in which MH Student 1 sexually assaulted another child.
Bullying also was rampant at the school, investigators found.
“Mission Hill School’s failure to implement a standard approach to addressing bullying concerns — and its ‘hands-off’ attitude toward such concerns — normalized student-on-student violence,” according to the report, “and allowed pervasive bullying to continue, in some cases for years, including by serial bullies who repeatedly targeted other students without discipline or effective intervention.”
In one case of bullying and sexual assault, MH Staff 3 met with MH Admin 3, who appeared “calm” and “unflappable” upon learning of the incident.
In an attempt at “restorative justice,” some victims and perpetrators were placed in a room with a mediator, treating the incidents as if they were conflicts, which is exactly the opposite of what you should do in cases of sexual abuse and bullying, said Barbara Coloroso, an educator and
author of the book “The Bully, the Bullied and the Not So Innocent Bystander.”
“When you use conflict resolution in bullying, you retarget the target and the bully comes out on top again,” Coloroso said. ”It’s deplorable. You have to own what you did, make restitution and in some cases it may be possible to heal with the person you harmed. But that comes way afterward.”
The Hinkley Allen report concludes these serious incidents were not addressed appropriately by school personnel and confirm “multiple systematic
reporting failures” by school employees, who are mandated reporters of child abuse.
“Swift and urgent action is needed,” Cassellius told the school committee Wednesday. “Far too many children have been harmed, and there is a school culture that allowed this.”
In a statement Friday, the district said, “BPS is committed to holding any staff accountable who were made aware of the complaints and failed to act. Our next steps include fully investigating the systemic failures that allowed these events to occur.”