Palo Alto under scrutiny in alleged sex abuse case
The Palo Alto Unified School District is facing more scrutiny over its handling of sexual misconduct, this time for reducing a male student’s punishment for alleged sexual harassment.
A female student at Gunn High School has filed a petition in Santa Clara County Superior Court that seeks to reinstate the district’s original punishment, which barred the male student from participating in the school’s prestigious robotics team, to which she also belongs.
The male student sexually assaulted the girl, the petition alleges, then taunted her about it in text messages and comments at school.
Part of the district’s response was to require the male student to stop participating in the Gunn Robotics Team, according to the petition. But earlier this month, the district told the girl’s family it would allow the male student to return to the team this year.
A judge on Jan. 25 granted a stay in the case that will require the
male student to stay off the team pending the outcome of the court proceedings.
Both students are minors, and neither is named in the petition, which was filed last week. Attorneys for the girl — Crystal Riggins and Laura Riparbelli of San Jose law firm Hoge Fenton Jones and Appel — declined to comment on the case.
The U.S. Department of Education accused Palo Alto Unified in 2017 of failing to promptly and thoroughly investigate students’ reports of sexual harassment. Since then, the department’s Office of Civil Rights has been monitoring the district’s handling of sexual misconduct complaints. A law firm last year found the district’s investigation of a 2015 sexual assault case was “inadequate.”
Palo Alto Unified Superintendent Don Austin declined to comment on the Gunn High School student’s discipline or say why the district allowed him back on the robotics team, citing confidentiality laws.
“As a school district, our obligation is … to protect the health, safety and well-being of all students,” Austin said. “We have tried really hard to balance the rights and needs of the students involved.”
The female student’s petition alleges she and the male student briefly dated before he forced her to perform a sex act in January 2018, and she ended their relationship. The girl filed a complaint under the gender equality law Title IX in June of that year, after she said the male student sent her harassing text messages about the assault and joked about it to friends and classmates.
A school investigation did not look into the alleged assault because it was said to have happened off campus. However, the investigation found the male student responsible for sexually harassing the girl, according to documents included as evidence with the petition. Even if the sexual encounter had been consensual, an investigator for the school wrote that the male student’s behavior still would have constituted harassment.
It is unclear whether the alleged assault was ever reported to police.
The district instituted several restrictions in November meant to keep the students from having any contact, one of which was to require that the male student not participate in the after- school robotics program. On Jan. 18, though, the district wrote that it would allow the student to take part in the team along with an escort. Later, the district proposed that the students could attend the program on alternating days.
None of those options is acceptable, attorneys for the girl wrote in their court filing.
“The district is essentially asking (the girl) to make an impossible choice — to choose either her safety or her access to education,” they wrote in the petition.