Autistic student was sexually abused by classmate at Key Peninsula school, lawsuit alleges
The family of an autistic teenager has sued the Peninsula School District, alleging that the boy was sexually abused and bullied by a middle school classmate.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Pierce County Superior Court, seeks unspecified damages.
The school district said Friday that it does not discuss pending litigation.
“The Peninsula School District is committed to providing a world-class education for our students in a safe, secure learning environment,” it said in a statement.
The lawsuit gives this account of what happened:
The boy was in eighth grade at Key Peninsula Middle School in 2017 when he started not wanting to go to school and said that another student “was mean to him, called him names, and scared him,” the complaint says.
His mother told his teacher, who said the boy seemed “hypersensitive.” The teacher said she would monitor the situation.
The next time the mother addressed the alleged bullying with the teacher, she got a similar response about her son being “hypersensitive.”
Her son started complaining regularly about how the other student “was bullying him at school and talking about sex to him,” and he “would come home from school, crying and visibly upset,” the complaint says.
The mother again spoke with the teacher about the other student’s alleged bullying and sexual language and the fact that her son was missing school due to stress from the other student’s behavior.
The teacher told her again that her son was “hypersensitive.”
It was March 2018 that the mother brought her son for a three-year evaluation with the district, and she spoke with the school psychologist and speech pathologist about the situation.
“They said this is a typical age that children start asking questions regarding sex and body parts,” the complaint says. “... over and over again, the District failed to take any action whatsoever to protect,” her son.
She kept telling the school about her concerns, and the alleged behavior continued.
It was the next school year that mother and son were changing channels on the TV, looking for a movie to watch, “and briefly on the screen a couple engaging in sexual intercourse flashed on the screen,” the complaint said.
The boy stood up, pointed and said that was what the other student did to him at school.
He told his mother the other student pushed him against the wall, touched him inappropriately and told him he’d go jail or the principal’s office if he told anyone.
The mother filed a report with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department.
“We did work the case,” sheriff’s spokesman Ed Troyer said Friday. “We did forensic interviews. It was sent to the prosecutor’s office and on March 25 we received notice from the prosecuting attorney’s office that no charges would be filed due to insufficient evidence. The case is closed.”
The district investigated after the mother went to law enforcement.
The alleged bully “had a history of engaging in sexual and offensive conduct toward his peers for a significant period of time,” the complaint said.
