Oakland suit: School failed to protect 6th-grader from rape, mother says
Alameda County mother who says an Oakland high school student raped her sixth-grade daughter and sexually abused the girl over several months under the noses of staff and administrators has sued the public charter school the children attended.
The suit accuses the Oakland Military Institute of negligence. The autonomous public school was founded in 2001 by Gov. Jerry Brown when he was mayor of Oakland and operates under a charter agreement with the Oakland Unified School District.
The lawsuit says school officials looked the other way for months last year as a 15-year-old boy sexually abused and eventually raped an 11year-old girl. Both were students at the Oakland Military Institute on Lusk Street east of Emeryville.
“There were rumors, graffiti on school walls, and gossip about them,” says the lawsuit filed Tuesday in Alameda County Superior Court. “Despite knowing about (the students), Oakland Military Institute took it upon itself not to inform (the alleged victim’s mother) of the sexual harassment, assault and battery of A.P.,” as the girl is referred to in the suit.
The Chronicle does not name victims of sexual assault and is not naming her mother because doing so could identify her daughter. Nor is the paper identifying the ac cused student because he is a minor and no charges have been filed against him.
School officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment. John Sasaki, a spokesman for Oakland Unified, said the district allows charter schools to handle such matters on their own unless there is evidence of a broader problem, “like if we have multiple sexual harassment claims at the school.” School districts have the power to revoke the charter of autonomous schools and shut them down in certain cases.
According to the lawsuit, four female students other than A.P. had complained to Oakland police months earlier, in November and December 2016, that the accused boy had sexually harassed, assaulted and committed battery against them. Around this time, police asked A.P.’s mother if they could interview the child, according to the suit, which says the mother filed a complaint with the school and demanded that the boy be prevented from contact with her daughter.
The crisis erupted on June 1, the suit says, when school officials told the mother that her daughter, then 12, had gone missing with the high school student. Looking for clues, the mother searched her daughter’s laptop, the suit says.
“She discovered that her daughter, A.P., had been sexually assaulted, forcibly raped and forcibly and emotionally coerced into sex and oral copulation” for several months, says the suit. It says the acts occurred at the school, including in the parking lot, hallways and girls’ bathroom.
The mother’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit accuses the Oakland Military Institute’s Superintendent Johanna Grell and its Middle School Principal Cesley Frost, among other staff members, of failing to protect A.P. from the older boy, and allowed him to drag her and “young impressionable girls” into restrooms and contact them physically or on the school’s chat system.
The suit asks for unspecified damages, and for the school to pay past and future bills for mental health therapy.
The Oakland Military Institute is a favorite charity of Brown, its founder. In August, The Chronicle reported that casinos, telecom giants, oil companies and other groups — many seeking favor with the governor — contributed $1.6 million in 2017 at Brown’s behest to the Oakland Military Institute and the Oakland School for the Arts, both founded by Brown.
Among the donations received by the military school were $100,000 from the San Pablo Lytton Casino, and $25,000 from Prime Healthcare.