Settlement remains unfulfilled in wrongful death
Assailants have not been interviewed for a documentary about the crime, as they agreed
This is not a crime story that ends neatly. The who, how and what are long solved. The trials are over. And the one irrefutable fact of this story that can never change is that Audrie Pott is gone.
In 2012, Audrie was sexually assaulted, written on and photographed by three male classmates who then posted the images on social media for all of her peers, and total strangers, to see.
After the attack at a house party, the
pretty brunette spent the following weeks humiliated, and ultimately hanged herself. She was 15 years old
fter her passing, her then- 16- year- old assailants, all fellow Saratoga High School students (their identities protected) were detained and prosecuted in juvenile court. Two of the three served 30 days in juvenile hall, and the third served 45 days,
“We had no doubt in our minds about culpability and identity,” said Jaron Shipp, deputy district attorney for Santa Clara County who led the prosecution in the case. “We also knew we couldn’t stall the case too long else risk getting any time served at all.”
The Pott family felt the sentences were too light.
“We didn’t want our daughter’s death to be in vain,” said Lawrence Pott, whose wife Lisa, Audrie’s step- mother, is now the CEO of the Audrie Pott Foundation.
“She needed to have a voice,” said her mom, Sheila Pott, visiting her ex- husband’s Saratoga home for this interview. “Her story needed to be corrected.
So the family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the assailants, whose criminal case never went to trial.
“We should never have settled,” Sheila Pott admits now.
“The judge encouraged us to work toward a settlement,” Lawrence Pott added.
“And we were exhausted and still grief- stricken,” Sheila Pott said.
They settled days before the trial was set to begin. The case was assigned an arbitrator and for all intents and purposes, it was over.
“That ’ s when it all started for me,” explained Lisa Pott, who heads Audrie’s namesake foundation to preserve her memory and fight against cyberbullying.
A total of $950,000 was paid by the insurance companies of the assailants’ families to help cover the expense of Audrie’s medical bills (she was brain dead on arrival to the hospital and on life support before she succumbed to her injuries) and court fees like a $100,000 medical investigation, and what was left over was donated to worldwide charities in Audrie’s name.
“But there was more to the settlement, and that part was the most important part to us in preserving Audrie’s memory,” Lisa Pott explained. “And collecting on that part of the settlement has been a nightmare ever since all parties agreed to it.”
In all, the settlement contained 11 terms, including that the assailants would be interviewed by a film team working on a documentary about the crime and that they would admit to and apologize in court for their roles. They have fulfilled all but one term, the Potts say.
That term reads, in part: “Each defendant must give 10 presentations in a question and answer, moderated format on the topic of: sexting, dissemination of nude photographs, soliciting nude photographs, slut shaming/spreading rumors and the dangers of alcohol and drugs at any high school or similar youth foundation.”
“We had a hope, still have a hope, that these boys could have learned from this experience to become better men,” Lawrence Pott explained.
The settlement goes on to explain how the identity of the presenters will be protected, but asks that two presentations be booked within six months of the April 2015 agreement and that proof of all presentations be confirmed within two years of the settlement.
If they couldn’t fulfill this term, they had to pay in the range of $ 5,000 to $100,000 each.
“After Audrie’s funeral, this has been the singlemost difficult part of the entire process,” Lisa Pott explained. “It’s been like reliving the trauma over and over again to get these kids to live up to this agreement.”
So they tried going through the court appointed arbitrator, William Gavin, to enforce the final term.
“You’re the third phone call I’ve received about this case,” Gavin told Saratoga News. “I only heard about it when ( Lawrence Pott) called me about a year ago” about the noncompliance issue.
Gavin told him to take the issue back to the judge, so in February 2016 attorney Bob Allard, who represented the family in the settlement, wrote a letter to the judge asking for an arbitration hearing “as required by the settlement agreement.” There was no response. A spokesperson for his office confirmed that Judge Brian Walsh did not have any such items on his calendar.
“We don’t hate these boys,” Lawrence Pott said. “We don’t want bad things to happen to them, we’re not looking to humiliate them; we just want to know that they have learned from this experience and aren’t continuing to carry this disregard for women into their adult lives.”
“Our hope with these presentations is that we could have changed the mindset of the bystander— the person who witnesses a crime happening and does not step up,” Lisa Pott added. “If anything good can come from losing Audrie, that mindset shift was our hope.”
Though the boys’ families have kept a tight lid on their identities, gossip abounds and online searches reveal a consistent three names. Twelve speeches were delivered and documented in 2016 by one of the assailants, but the documentation obtained by the Bay Area News Group show that the presentations were given to very small groups, not the reach the family had hoped for.
The documentary film that the settlement required each to participate in, “Audrie & Daisy” by San Francisco filmmakers Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk of Actual Films, won a Peabody award this year and continues to stream on Netflix.
The Audrie Pott Foundation stays active, sharing news about cyber-bullying and slut-shaming education.
They operate thanks to the donations of supporters and fund on- campus therapists, art in the community and high school education efforts.
“We move on,” Sheila Pot t explained. “Our daughter was a victim, and we work every day not to let her memory be wasted. We still miss her so much.”
Her father agreed, explaining the motivation to keep fighting for justice for Audrie.
“Not a day goes by … ” Lawrence Pott said. “She was my little girl, you know?”