Trigger Warning for discussions of childhood sexual violence, sexual violence in schools, and rape denialism

A story of prolonged sexual abuse against children over 25 years shows the dangers of not believing sexual violence survivors who step forward with their stories. In Alabama, a now-retired elementary school teacher named Danny Acker (left) has been charged with four counts of first-degree sexual abuse against two female students under the age of 12. At the time of his arrest, the teacher allegedly confessed to molesting an astonishing 21 female students throughout his career.

Making a horrific story even worse, the school board knew he had a history of sexual abuse allegations all the way back in 1993, were given the opportunity then to remove him from his position of authority, and chose instead to reinstate his job as a fourth-grade teacher. Indeed, they say that given the opportunity, they’d do it again.

Two longtime Alabama school board leaders are defending the panel’s decision in 1993 to reinstate an elementary school teacher who was accused of molesting a student, even though the teacher is now charged with more abuse.

School board President Lee Doebler and Vice President Steve Martin said students, parents and community leaders encouraged the Shelby County Board of Education to return 4th grade teacher Danny Acker to his Alabaster classroom, and the board agreed 5-0. Doebler and Martin are the only board members who remain from those days, and both said they did the best they could with the information they had.

“Looking back, given the evidence we had I would have made the same vote,” Doebler said. “I wish we had some evidence, but unfortunately, we didn’t.” …

Shelby County’s superintendent placed Acker on leave in October 1992 when a student accused him of touching her improperly at her home. A county grand jury reviewed the case and did not return an indictment.

Martin said the superintendent recommended Acker’s dismissal. The school board held a hearing in February 1993 that lasted more than eight hours and then voted unanimously to keep him.

Martin said there were no witnesses and no physical evidence. He said the abuse was alleged to have occurred during babysitting rather than at the school.

Doebler, who was also the board president in 1993, said many students, past and present, and their parents turned out as character witnesses to support Acker, and the board was heavily influenced by the grand jury’s decision to take no action.

“There was no evidence presented to us to indicate the grand jury was incorrect,” he said.

Martin said Acker’s father, longtime County Commissioner Dan Acker, made no effort to influence the decision. “The dad did not call anyone or discuss it with anyone,” he said.

The tragedy here is not only that so many girls were sexually victimized in ways that can never be erased, but also that when shown quite dramatically and horrifyingly the error of their methods, those with the power to have stopped this abuser still do not see the inherent flaw in their system.

When a young girl reported having been sexually abused by a popular and trusted adult male teacher, the school board failed to treat her testimony with the respect that it deserved. Instead, they sided with power. When given the choice between the word of a young girl and the word of an adult man who wielded authority over her, they chose the adult man. When reflecting on the consequences of potentially making the wrong decision, they decided that an innocent man losing his job would have been a greater travesty of justice than countless vulnerable children being placed at the mercy of a predator. They sided with adults’ rights at the expense of children’s rights, with men’s rights at the expense of girls’ rights. They sided with historically and presently white supremacist and patriarchal standards of “evidence” and justice without thinking twice. And then they appealed to our sense of “fairness” to claim that this is the way it ought to be.

With Acker’s reinstatement based largely on the grand jury’s decision, this should be a lesson — though only one among many — on the gross unreliability of the criminal justice system as a reference point for an individual’s true innocence or guilt. At the same time as this system harasses men of color unrelentingly for drug and property crimes, it ignores the violent crimes of white men against women and girls on the basis of their “reputations” as socially valuable¹ members of the community. It should also be yet another lesson as to how the criminal justice system decides when harm has been committed and when community safety has been achieved, as to what exactly the criminal justice system and those systems modeled after it values.

A man’s right to employment and good name were given primacy over the right of girls to have a learning environment safe from sexual terrorism. Indeed, his privacy was likely given extreme concern, as well — in their defense, the school board does not mention any effort to determine if other victims existed, to encourage parents to talk to their children about their teacher, to urge other survivors to come forward.

Even with so many victims, it should come as absolutely no surprise that no others reported on their own. It is extremely common for victims to not speak of childhood sexual abuse until they are adults. Our social silence around sexuality, consent, and interpersonal violence almost ensures that children will not have the vocabulary or the resources to speak of what is happening at the time that it is happening. Children, like all victims of sexual abuse, are also likely to blame themselves; indeed, it is from society that they learn these messages. Those children weren’t wrong in their choices. A grand jury failed to indict him, a community united behind him, a school board chose to reinstate him and put him in the position to abuse further. If his victims feared that they would not be believed, they were probably right.

In 25 years, of at least 21 students, until now only one of these victims had the resources to come forward with her story. It is an indictment of this culture that she had to stand alone, because for 20 years no other victims were given the tools to stand with her. It is an even greater indictment that even when she did have the resources to speak of the violence committed against her, she was not believed. Indeed, an entire community rallied together to call this molested little girl a liar.

We teach children to tell us if they have been the victim of a bad touch (and the consider our work on their continued safety done). But we do not mean it. We do not mean it at all.

Throughout this story is a sustained denial of how power and privilege works. While Acker’s longtime County Commissioner father may not have made any phone calls on his son’s behalf, that doesn’t render his influence over the decision a moot point. Those with true influence need not necessarily flex it in an active way. People simply understand that there will be consequences if those with sizable power and influence are not given the deference usually afforded to them. Further, community members are more likely to stand up in their favor. The school board members defending their decision would have us believe that the great turnout for ACker has nothing to do with his family’s position within the community. But it would extend beyond mere gullibility into willful ignorance to truly accept that as the case. Acker’s family’s status can no more be divorced from the response to his abuse than can his straight white maleness; in a society so invested in upholding hegemonic power, all are considered short-hands for innocence.

Now Acker has been arrested and charged, long after his easy access to a large pool of victims has been removed. He may be convicted, though even with an alleged confession, there is absolutely no guarantee. Best case scenario, he will be punished for his irreversible violence, and that will be considered justice. And yet, it would have been commonly considered an injustice 20 years ago to believe a girl who said she had been abused, to have prevented the opportunity for much of that violence to have ever been committed.

Eighth-grade teacher Shad Knutson has been charged with three counts of sexual assault against three different female students over three years. He is no longer working for Nathan Hale Middle School, where all of the alleged assaults were committed, but he did remain employed with them for three years after the first allegation was made. Numerous additional allegations were made in the years that followed. And still, the school’s “investigations” resulted in his remaining employed, until several months after police finally got involved.

School policy has come into question after a former eighth-grade teacher was accused of sexual assault. Did Omaha Public Schools do enough when students came forward with allegations of sexual harassment against Shad Knutson?

The 34-year-old taught at Nathan Hale Middle School for three years. Each year, a different female student came forward, claiming he touched them inappropriately. But it took until last fall for police to get involved.

Now, Knutson faces three counts of felony sexual assault.

One board member brought up his concerns at a committee meeting Monday. Justin Wayne said he wants police involvement from the very start of an investigation into reported abuse. He said let teachers teach and let police follow the facts.

“As long as OPS’s process and an outside person’s process come to the same conclusion, it’s OK. It’s when they differ (that) there’s an issue,” Wayne said.

OPS said repeated internal investigations into the reports of sexual harassment turned up no credible evidence. But prosecutors disagree.

School staff and district leaders said its policy works. They said they prioritize student safety, while protecting educators from false reports.

Except that student safety clearly isn’t being prioritized when the policy on the sexual assault of 13-year-old girls seems to apply a three-strikes before you’re out rule.

While the question admittedly gets a lot murkier when there are minors involved and the offender is a government-paid and sponsored employee, as a general rule I am not opposed to keeping internal reports of misconduct internal. Victims often do not want to get law enforcement involved, for very good reason. I believe that their choices in terms of reporting methods should be respected (while all options should also be made available and accessible to them), and I do believe that there should be means outside the broken U.S. judicial system for dealing with sexual violence.

The problem, however, occurs when these local systems of accountability are, like the judicial system itself, more invested in protecting the rights and reputation of abusers than the rights and safety of victims. Institutions are notoriously bad at holding themselves accountable. While schools are supposed to be in the business of serving and protecting students, they far too frequently are much more interested in protecting themselves as entities.

This story largely caught my interest due to the way it so closely mirrors an episode I personally witnessed at my own middle school. Also in eighth grade, the new English teacher began sexually harassing a certain female student in full public view. Throughout class he would leer at her, “flirt,” and make highly inappropriate and sexualized remarks about her clothing choices and physical appearance. He would frequently hold her after class for no legitimate reason. She told us (and while I now regret many of our “supportive” gestures, we fully believed her) that during these after-class meetings, he would ask her personal questions, stand overly close to her, brush up against her, and even stroke her hair.

We didn’t know words like “sexual harassment” then. So we just called it “creepy.” But we knew that it wasn’t right.

When she and her mother reported the harassment to administration, they were told, verbatim, that the teacher-predator was “a nice guy” who was “awkward” and “nervous” and that he didn’t “mean it like that.” When the harassment thereafter escalated, she did her best to quietly survive.

And when those of us who watched it happening attempted to engage in rudimentary good bystander behavior, we were repeatedly rebuffed by the adults. A male student who pointedly interrupted the in-class harassment by asking the teacher why he was always focusing on and bothering the student in question was met with a scolding for being rude and making inappropriate suggestions about the teacher’s motives. Several friends and myself — and I do not doubt we weren’t the only ones — attempted to report the harassment on two separate occasions to our two most trusted teachers. In both instances, we were met with aghast faces — not at the harassing teacher’s behavior, but at ours. We were chastised for “gossiping” and insulting the teacher’s reputation, and again assured that the teacher was “a nice guy.” If there was as problem, we were told, the administration would have dealt with it when it was reported. Since they did not take action, there was not a problem, and we needed to drop the issue.

I do not know if the teacher’s behavior ever progressed to physical sexual assault either that year or in subsequent years once I had graduated from the school, as it clearly did in the case of Shad Knutson. But I certainly walked away with the impression that if it had, like Shad Knutson he would have been protected. It was my very first lesson in rape culture, though I did not yet know it.

While I do not in any way wish to minimize the experience of the student who was the direct target of his harassment — none of us experienced what she did — our teacher inevitably victimized all of his female students by proxy, by stealing our sense of safety in the classroom. This is how misogynistic harassment and assault work — by terrorizing not only the direct victim, but all women who witness and know of it. We are taught that we, too, can become the victim at any time. We are made hyper-aware of the fact that we will be treated differently and made more vulnerable because of our genders. We are made defensive in our everyday lives.

And in this case, we were taught that the teachers who we trusted, who we very much loved and in whom we confided, the teachers who we believed were there to protect us, would given the opportunity choose their colleague’s reputation of our words. They would protect their own before they would protect us. They would choose friends’ careers over student safety. They would teach us good touch and bad touch and to say something if we saw something, and then when we followed their instructions they would tell us to shut the fuck up.

While I definitely don’t claim the circumstances to be identical, there’s no doubt in my mind that the victims who originally reported the harassment and assaults and the students who watched the administration allow Knutson back into the classroom no less than three times did get a very similar set of lessons. The girls especially were taught that their word and safety would not be valued, that they would not be believed or taken seriously, that what men in positions of authority did to their bodies did not matter, and speaking up was often fruitless. If they were ever privileged enough, as I was, to previously believe that their educators had their best interests at heart, they were taught here that their educators could not be trusted. (And if they already could not trust their educators, this was then yet one more horrific instance in a long series of systemic violence.)

What makes this case even more disturbing is how administrators still do not believe that they have done anything wrong, and still defend their right to put predator teachers’ needs above those abused students‘:

Susan Colvin, principal at Nathan Hale Middle School, addressed a school board committee, which voted Monday to keep in place district policies for reporting allegations of sexual harassment and child abuse.

Board member Bambi Bartek asked Colvin if she believed she had done the right thing.

“Without a doubt, definitely,” Colvin said in her first public remarks about the allegations against former Nathan Hale teacher Shad M. Knutson. Colvin declined to comment further after the meeting. [...]

Proulx said student complaints should be looked into, but in a way that maintains the teacher’s dignity.

Board vice president Shirley Tyree said such allegations should be handled carefully.

“We need to be very, very careful when we start accusing people of things,” she said. “They never get that portion of their life back.”

If nothing has been learned from this case, I don’t know what it might possibly take for a lesson to be learned. After all, one can hardly learn what one actively resists being taught. What we’re seeing here is a clear statement that teacher rights come before student rights and student safety. It’s not a particularly new or surprising revelation that the rights of abusers come before those of their victims, but particularly within a school setting it is one with chilling implications, nonetheless.

Yesterday, I wrote about the horrific case of Kelley Williams-Bolar (pictured left), a woman who has been jailed for ten days and slapped with a felony record — which will prevent her from obtaining her teacher’s license — for sending her children to a school district other than the one they lived in.

My analysis of this unconscionable set of events can be found in the previous post. Today, I just want to draw your attention to a way that you can help Williams-Bolar appeal her case. Via Change.org, Williams-Bolar is working with the National Action Network, and is in need of funds to help her pay the legal fees she will incur in appealing the judge’s verdict.

You can send donations to the National Action Network Akron Chapter, c/o Kelley Williams-Bolar, P.O. Box 4152, Akron, Ohio, 44321. Checks can be made payable to Williams-Bolar.

Please give if you can and help spread this information far and wide.

Last week, a woman was sent to jail for ten days, placed on two years probation, and ordered to complete 80 hours of community service for a felony conviction. Her crime was fudging documents so that she could send her two daughters to the “wrong” school district, in the richer Akron, Ohio suburb where her father lived. She was led away in handcuffs.

On Saturday, a jury found Williams-Bolar guilty on two counts of tampering with records. She was also facing one count of grand theft, but the judge declared a mistrial on that charge after the jury couldn’t reach a verdict.

Williams-Bolar could have been sent to a state prison for up to 10 years, but Judge Cosgrove decided on a 10-day sentence in the Summit County Jail after weighing Williams-Bolar’s lack of criminal record with the seriousness of her crimes.

“I felt that some punishment or deterrent was needed for other individuals who might think to defraud the various school systems,” Cosgrove told NewsChannel5 after the sentencing.

Prosecutors said Williams-Bolar lived in Akron, but falsified enrollment papers in the Copley-Fairlawn School District so her two girls could attend schools for two years.

Prosecutors said the lies cost the district about $30,000. Copley-Fairlawn does not have open enrollment and out-of-district tuition is about $800 per month.

The school district spent about $6,000 to bring the case to trial. That included hiring a private investigator who followed Williams-Bolar and her children around while secretly videotaping their movements.

Superintendent Brain Poe said Copley-Fairlawn has lost hundreds of thousand of dollars because of parents illegally enrolling their children into the schools.

Poe said residency disputes are usually resolved after parents prove that they live in the district, pay tuition or remove their kids from the schools.

This marked the first time that one of their residency challenges went before a jury in criminal court. Poe said prosecuting this case was meant to send a message.

“If you’re paying taxes on a home here… those dollars need to stay home with our students,” Poe said.

One cannot honesty discuss this case without discussing the fact that Williams-Bolar is a black woman, raising black children in a city that has a large non-white population, living in a home secured through the local Housing Authority, while Copely is a very comfortably middle-class and overwhelmingly white town. Williams-Bolar is a mother who has been jailed for sending her kids to the “wrong” school district. But she’s also a black mother who has been jailed for sending her kids to a white school district.

Still, some will inevitably argue that this is not an issue of race or even class. It’s an issue of rules, of order. Someone broke the rules, and now they have to pay.

I would like to remind them firstly that who pays and how is always political.  But just as importantly, it is not arbitrary where we place borders, how we enforce borders, and who we punish for crossing them. Borders, especially modern ones, are chosen. They are artificial. We like to tell ourselves that we create borders out of necessity, to more efficiently manage communities and resources. But we also create those borders specifically to keep other people out, to control resources in a way that prevents certain populations from accessing them. There is no accident in how borders are drawn and who is being kept out and removed from resources, not along lines of race, and not along lines of class — especially not in a country were so many borders were explicitly drawn with racist intent, during times of colonization, during times of slavery, during times of Jim Crow and less “official” forms of segregation, or even during modern times of “legals” and “illegals.” It’s a little too easy to write off as coincidence that the “wrong” school district was white in a country that has a very long and modern history, both official and unofficial, of keeping all non-white but especially black students out of white schools.

As Superintendent Poe explicitly states up above, this is about “our” tax dollars, and keeping them where they belong. And anytime we start talking about “us” and “them,” we need to look at what we mean by those words, because it rarely reflects well on our intentions and prejudices. William-Bolar crossed a border that was designed to keep her out. She “stole” resources that were apparently not her or her children’s to have. (Indeed, she was also charged with grand theft, which resulted in a hung jury.)

I think it’s about time we think about what we mean by “racism” if a black mother landing in jail because she sent her kids to a better school that would not have them doesn’t count, if calling it “stealing” when she gives them access to resources these white parents get to take for granted doesn’t qualify. If we don’t understand the racism of the much higher likelihood that a black mother will have to send her child to a sub-par school that will not teach them all they need to know than a white mother, if we don’t understand the racism of punishing her for fighting back against that inherently unequal, oppressive, white supremacist system, we don’t understand the first thing about racism at all.

In fact, (though I object to his metaphorical use of the word “cripple”) I can’t say it any better than Dr. Boyce Watkins did in his blog post:

This case is a textbook example of everything that remains racially wrong with America’s educational, economic and criminal justice systems. Let’s start from the top: Had Ms. Williams-Bolar been white, she likely would never have been prosecuted for this crime in the first place (I’d love for them to show me a white woman in that area who’s gone to jail for the same crime). She also is statistically not as likely to be living in a housing project with the need to break an unjust law in order to create a better life for her daughters. Being black is also correlated with the fact that Williams-Bolar likely didn’t have the resources to hire the kinds of attorneys who could get her out of this mess (since the average black family’s wealth is roughly 1/10 that of white families). Finally, economic inequality is impactful here because that’s the reason that Williams-Bolar’s school district likely has fewer resources than the school she chose for her kids. In other words, black people have been historically robbed of our economic opportunities, leading to a two-tiered reality that we are then imprisoned for attempting to alleviate. That, my friends, is American Racism 101.

This case is a textbook example of how racial-inequality created during slavery and Jim Crow continues to cripple our nation to this day. There is no logical reason on earth why this mother of two should be dehumanized by going to jail and be left permanently marginalized from future economic and educational opportunities. Even if you believe in the laws that keep poor kids trapped in underperforming schools, the idea that this woman should be sent to jail for demanding educational access is simply ridiculous.

You should read everything he has to say on the subject.

In the end, William-Bolar’s real punishment is not the indignity and injustice of her 10 days in jail. It is the felony record that will follow her for many years to come. It will inevitably keep her from obtaining employment, from creating an economically better life for her daughters. Specifically, it will keep her from getting the teaching license she has been studying for at college — money, time, and effort all sent down the drain. A dream and opportunity taken from her because she had dreams for her daughters, wanted opportunities for them, and did the best she could in an oppressive system to see to it that they got them.

Maybe we should talk about that when we want to talk about theft, what was stolen, and from whom.

via sheresists

UPDATE: Information on how to help Kelley Williams-Bolar with her legal fees can be found here.

A new study purports to show a disturbing discrepancy between the number of teens who say they’ve “had sex” with those who test positive for STDs. Of those who supposedly said they’d been abstinent, 10% tested positive for at least one of the three common STDs (chlamydia, gonorrhea, and trichomoniasis). As such, researchers and journalists have assumed that at least 10% of those who said they hadn’t had sex must have been lying to their doctors about their sexual histories.

When I first saw the headlines — “Some young adults with STDs say they’ve never had sex”, “‘Abstinent’ teens test positive for STDs” — I assumed that a significant portion of the discrepancy could likely be accounted for by a failure to adequately explain to the teens what “sex” means. The fact is that in dominant culture, “sex” very unfortunately still means “penis-in-vagina intercourse” to the vast majority of people. Ask a lot of teens if they’ve “had sex” and they very well might say no and believe they are telling the absolute truth — even though they may have engaged in all kinds of non-intercourse sexual activities  such as oral sex, hand to genital contact, non-penetrative genital rubbing, etc. And, of course, these kinds of sex all present the potential for STD transmission, to varying degrees.

But my assumption was wrong. The researchers didn’t fail to adequately define “sex” for the study participants — they explicitly excluded all non-intercourse activities themselves in their questioning, by asking only whether each person had engaged in sexual intercourse in the past 12 months.

So let’s talk, instead, about the problems with the study. Frankly, I’m appalled that it’s treated by researchers as though it can teach us anything useful at all. The wording of the question erases all sexual activity that takes place outside of cis heterosexual sexual pairings, contributing yet again to the cultural notion that no other sexual pairings exist, let alone matter. It also erases a good deal of sex that takes place between cis men and women, too — and if what went on during my teenage years are any indication, an even greater deal of what goes on between teenagers who are in sexual relationships but not ready for or interested in intercourse.

So we’ve ended up with some extremely inconclusive data. Even the researchers themselves acknowledge that some of the STDs among those who did not report engaging in intercourse could have been transmitted more than 12 months ago or through non-intercourse sexual activities. Though they try to downplay this likelihood, the fact is that you don’t know what you don’t take the time to ask. Posing better questions in the first place would eliminate a significant amount of guesswork.

But the researchers seem to have nonetheless drawn their conclusions:

Study findings indicate that “sole reliance on young adults’ self-reported penile/vaginal sexual activity as a marker for STD acquisition risk may be imprecise and further, could be problematic,” the researchers write.

They argue that future research should attempt to find ways to reduce “discrepant” reports by young people about their sexual activity.

The researchers note that they did not collect information about anal sex among men and that some cases of chlamydia may persist 12 months after sexual intercourse. And study participants only indicated whether they’d had sex had in the past 12 months.

“Given the length of the reporting interval, the previous 12 months, young adults’ retrospective recall could be inaccurate,” the researchers write. However, they add that “volitional underreporting” could explain discrepancies between self-reports and facts.

The findings suggest that doctors should do more than just ask young people about their sexual activity.

“Importantly, our findings reveal that if pediatricians and adolescent medicine physicians do not test all young people, there are likely a substantial number of missed cases of STDs that will go undiagnosed, untreated, and spread to future sex partners,” the researchers write.

Now, it’s not that I’m opposed to more STD testing. As long as informed consent is involved, this strikes me as a good idea. Once privacy and financial concerns are accounted for, consensual STD tests that turn up negative cause little harm. Not conducting STD tests that would have come back positive, on the other hand, causes a great deal. There certainly is a “better safe than sorry” argument to be made.

What unnerves me is the casual glossing over of the inadequacy of the questions asked — and the complete absence of a recommendation that doctors should ask better ones. I say that better than assuming young people to all be a bunch of liars, doctors should work harder to establish meaningful communication with patients and, importantly, to interact with them in a non-judgmental way. A way that doesn’t assume them to be straight, a way that doesn’t assume there’s only one kind of sex, a way that doesn’t suggest imminent judgment if a female patient says she has had sex, a way that doesn’t suggest an assumption that a non-white patient or low-income patient must have had sex. A way, in other words, that treats patients compassionately and humanely.

It’s also important to get to the root of the problem that’s even more insidious than the extremely common and even cultivated feeling of fear and intimidation towards doctors — the social fear of sexuality, and the dominant attitude that sexual activity is something to hide.

To the extent that some young people undoubtedly are lying about their sexual histories to their doctors, surprise is both a naive and irresponsible reaction. Most of us growing up in a sexphobic culture absorb the message through one means or another that sex is something to be punished — if you’re a woman, if you’re queer, if you’re trans, if you’re not married, if you’re non-white, if you’re poor, if you’re disabled, if you’re kinky. Pregnancy and STDs are often misconstrued as “punishments” for having kinds of sex that are not socially approved. And very real punishments are often enacted for certain sexual behaviors — whether they be slut-shaming, homophobic verbal and physical assaults, other forms of social ostracizing, or being cut off from financial support.

Young people are perhaps the most at risk for punishment for sexual behavior. Adolescent sexuality is frequently seen as flat-out wrong, and it’s still considered entirely appropriate for parents to penalize teens for consensual behavior they’ve engaged in with their own bodies. The law has the right to punish them, too — not all states allow minors confidential access to contraception, and most states require that parents be notified prior to an abortion. Coupled with huge gaps in sex education, there’s a lot of fear surrounding the acknowledgment of sexual activity for young people, and many legitimate reasons for it.

In other words, this isn’t just a problem of doctors not being patient, or compassionate, or kind, or understanding, or unbiased enough — though those are very real problems for many people. It’s a social problem regarding how we, as the dominant culture, treat sexuality. It’s something that can’t be cured with a few “sensitivity” trainings, with a book, with a small group of people just giving it a little practice.

But it is something to consider. What if those of us who were raised either explicitly or implicitly to believe that sex is dirty, secretive, and unspeakable hadn’t been? What if we didn’t see sex everywhere, but honest dialogue about it almost nowhere? What if the sex we saw portrayed was genuinely varied both in practice and participants? What if some entirely consensual sexual practices weren’t routinely portrayed as “weird” and “deviant” while non-consensual ones were portrayed as “normal” and “how it works”? What if sex was treated as healthy, for those who want to have it, when they want to have it? What if desired, consensual sex was not treated as something to be hidden, something that was frowned upon or disapproved, something that might result in shame — and not desiring or having sex was treated the same way? What if having an STD or unplanned pregnancy did not have a stigma attached to it? What if there was no confusion about what people meant when they talked about sex, because questions could be asked openly and without embarrassment? What if knowledge of your sexual orientation or activity wasn’t tied to the threat of not having a place to live, a caretaker to help you live independently, or money to survive? What if knowledge of your sexual activities wasn’t likely to be used as a weapon against you because of your race, class, disability, gender identity, or sexual orientation?

I imagine that there would be fewer teens — and adults, for that matter — lying to their doctors about their sexual activities. Because the reasons why we do so would be gone. And they’re not issues that doctors alone can fix, but ones that are on all of us.

One final point: while I imagine this only accounts for a fairly small portion of the discrepancy, it’s important to note that even with better, more inclusive questions being asked of patients, some who say they have not had sex yet still test positive for STDs will undoubtedly be telling the truth. It’s called sexual assault. Young people are particularly at risk for sexual violence, and this fact is almost universally erased whenever the topic of pregnancy and STD risk comes up. Most STDs are passed through consensual sex. But not all. There are very good reasons to ask patients about histories of sexual violence, including reproductive coercion, during medical visits. Assessing a patient’s risk for sexually transmitted diseases is just one of them.

Trigger Warning for discussions of sexual violence against children and adolescents, as well as victim-blaming and rape apologism.

A new study out of B.C., Canada (pdf) on whether age of sexual consent laws are actually doing anything to prevent the sexual abuse of young people by adults has acted as an opportunity to engage in a whole host of rape denialism and victim-blaming behavior. The language in framing contained in the report itself certainly didn’t help, and the media apparently decided to run with it:

Children in B.C. who had sex when they were 12 or under are more likely than older teenagers to have had sex first with an adult, according to a shocking new study by Vancouver researchers to be published today in the Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality.

University of B.C. and Simon Fraser University researchers analyzed data from the Adolescent Health Survey, which polled 29,000 students in Grades 7 to 12 over three months in 2008, the year the federal government increased the age of consent to 16 from 14.

The purpose of the study was to test the government’s reasons for changing the law after 100 years, but what the authors discovered was that the law apparently does not protect the younger kids who are most at risk of sexual abuse. [...]

They discovered a shocking 39 per cent of students who first had sex when they were 12 or under said it was with someone age 20 or older. Of those who first had sex when they were 14 or 15, only two to three per cent said it was with someone 20 or older. [...]

The numbers were similar for boys (38 per cent) and girls (39 per cent) 12 and under who said their first sex was with an adult.

“Our evidence really doesn’t support that it is the 14-and 15-year-olds who are at greatest risk of having sex with adults. It is the younger teens, and that has always been illegal,” said senior author Elizabeth Saewyc, professor of nursing and adolescent medicine at UBC.

Okay, first of all, I just have to ask: are we allergic to the word rape? Or have we been aiding and abetting rape by covering it up as “sex” for so damn long now that we don’t even know how to properly use the word anymore? Because I’m really fucking tired of pointing out the obvious over and over and over again. A child under the age of 12 — 12!!! — cannot “have sex” with an adult. But as these numbers pretty clearly show, an adult sure can rape hir.

Honestly, it seems the problem is that we don’t even understand what rape is. How can we use the word appropriately if we don’t even know what it means? And it terrifies me to know that we can’t even begin to solve this problem until we do understand what rape means and what consent looks like, within the context of how very, very far away from that point we are. Because here are the “solutions” currently being offered:

In the study report, the authors say additional strategies are needed to protect the kids who are the most vulnerable. They suggest improving education in schools to include information about healthy relationships.

That would include “talking to teens and children about dating and relationships and why older adults might want to date younger teens and why that it is not appropriate,” Miller said. “Also, what does consent mean, and how can we navigate that as teenagers in a relationship?”

Children aged 9, 10, 11, and 12 — and yes, certainly a whole lot younger, too — are being raped by adults. And the “solution” is reportedly to teach those children better about what is an is not appropriate.

It’s enough to make a person break down and cry.

Look, I support sex education, you know I do, including sex education specifically as a means of sexual assault prevention. But such strategies are about two things — firstly, preventing young people from becoming rapists, and secondly, giving young people the tools that may help them to recognize abuse and defend themselves from it.

But teaching young people about how to not rape doesn’t do anything about the adults out there preying on young children. And while giving everyone defense tools is vital, teaching potential victims how to defend themselves is hardly the place to stop. Because sometimes, those tools just aren’t enough, and being able to recognize abuse doesn’t necessarily leave you with an escape mechanism. And always, we shouldn’t have to be defending ourselves in the first place.

Young people aged 12 and under are not the bearers and promoters of rape culture. They are the victims of it. And we cannot “protect” them from it by treating them as though they’re the problem.

As for the question of whether or not the law protects those children who are most at risk of being victims of sexual abuse … no, of course it doesn’t. To the extent that laws act as deterrents to certain kinds of behavior at all, the effect is always limited. The law isn’t protecting children from sexual abuse? It never has. It hasn’t been protecting adult women from rape or intimate partner violence, either. The statistics are mind-boggling and heart-wrenching, across the board. This ineffective nature of our legal system at protecting vulnerable people from abuse is one of the reasons why I think we need to reconsider the system wholly. But the fact is that the law only seeks retribution once harm has been done, not to prevent the harm in the first place.

For that we’re going to need a change in culture, and no, I’m not sure that legislative acts and legal penalties are going to play a large role. A very basic start would be to stop blaming victims by framing the problem as an issue of their “questionable decisions”:

The study found that teenagers aged 14 and 15 do not make more questionable decisions about sex than older adolescents. For instance, very few 14- and 15-year-olds had sex with people outside the “close in age” exemptions.

Dear god, the point of the laws — at least as I understand them, and certainly as they should be — is not to convince young people to not engage in “questionable” behavior, it’s to try to scare off the predators who wish to exploit and harm and abuse them. As I said, laws aren’t hugely effective deterrents to begin with, but no wonder it’s not working here. We can’t even seem to manage to work out who, exactly, the laws are aimed at, what kind of behavior we’re trying to deter (Raping or being raped? Clearly, these questions are difficult!), and who is really to blame.

But I’m telling you, as long as we keep acting like young people, including those who haven’t even yet reached their teenage years, are equal co-conspirators in their own abuse, we’re certainly not going to get anywhere, either within or outside the judicial system.

Image via Lauredhel, through a Creative Commons-Noncommercial-Attribution License

Trigger warning for discussions of sexual violence, victim-blaming.

This morning I came across a post at a CNN blog about a new study (which has not yet been peer reviewed) on teen sex and sexual health. The aspect of the study making headlines both at CNN and elsewhere is this: “Girls take more chances during first sex.”

Even though teenage boys are known for their risky behavior, it’s girls who are more likely to engage in unprotected first sex, according to research presented Monday at an American Public Health Association meeting in Denver.

Nicole Weller, a doctoral student at Arizona State University, analyzed government data and found adolescent girls were 30 percent more likely than boys to have  sex without contraception during their first sexual encounter. Weller said that surprised her.

“It does because of the history of boys engaging in risky behavior across the spectrum and then seeing that females are having first unprotected sex is telling a different story,” Weller said. For example, teenage boys are more likely than girls to drink and smoke.

This framing immediately alarmed and horrified me, as it may some of you, for reasons that the Guttmacher Institute thankfully pointed out before I could:

But Laura Lindberg, senior research associate at the Guttmacher Institute, said boys may still have a lot to do with it. She said teenage girls are less likely than boys to want to have sex when it happens for the first time and may not do as good a job advocating for birth control. Lindberg added that contraception at first sex is 80 percent condoms, meaning birth control largely depends on the boy.

In other words? Lots and lots of girls are being raped during their “first sexual encounters.” And while some rapists do in fact use condoms, they’re not exactly the most reliable in that area. Nor, barring a few exceptions, are rape victims usually in a position to negotiate safer sex, when they’re unable to negotiate the act of not having sex at all.

And horrifically, CNN was the only source I found that seems to be reporting this relevant tidbit. Though they didn’t report that other studies have shown that a gob-smacking 10% of young women’s first intercourse is involuntary — in other words, that we’re not talking here about just a handful of cases. Further, while CNN did at least take the time to point out the likely connection between first intercourse being unwanted and first intercourse being unprotected, that didn’t stop them from using stigmatizing language about those “first sexual encounters” as “taking chances” and “risky behavior.”

I can’t quite wrap my head around that. We’re talking about young women being raped, and calling it risky behavior. We’re talking about young women being raped, and asking questions about condom use. We’re talking about young women being raped, and the biggest concern at the front of our minds is about STDs. We’re talking about young women being raped, and we’re asking why they don’t know any better?

Of course, a rape victim getting pregnant or contracting an STD through the assault matters, and compounds the trauma of the rape itself. But when we’re talking about a rampant epidemic of sexual violence, STDs and unwanted pregnancies should really not be alone at the top of our list of concerns.

Now, let’s be clear: I’m sure that some of the young women who didn’t use protection during their first sexual encounters were consenting. Absolutely positive, in fact. And yes, their health matters, too, as does the health of young men and youth of other genders who aren’t engaging in safer sex practices. Further, with the information I have in front of me, I cannot prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the higher likelihood of young women to not use protection during their first sexual encounters is directly related to so many young women’s first sexual encounters being non-consensual. I’m aware that correlation and causation are not the same thing.

But I know how to make an educated guess. I know that other studies show a really strong correlation between sexual violence and teen pregnancy. I know that reproductive coercion is common, and that it is sexual violence. I know that while there’s even so much as a strong question in our minds — as there right now really, really should be — that unprotected first sexual encounters and non-consensual first sexual encounters are significantly overlapping, it’s unconscionable to go around portraying women’s unprotected first encounters as irresponsible and talking about how “risky” they’re being. And I know that as much as sex education is needed, “sex education” as we currently know it in the United States is not a solution to this problem, but is rather just being used as a cop-out.

And yes, “sex education” is exactly what’s being proposed as a solution — even though several news sources offer conflicting reports that exposure to sex education didn’t change the fact that young women’s first sexual encounters were more likely to be unprotected.

But while regular readers probably know me to be a huge proponent of sex education, I don’t support it as the sole solution to this problem. Certainly not sex education as we most commonly understand it. Real sex education that delves into issues of meaningful consent, bodily autonomy, and sexual rights may indeed be useful. But even that is not a magic bullet. Neither, even, is greater, more reliable access to condoms and other contraception, though that matters, too. Because none of these things are likely, at least on their own, to help the huge numbers of young women who are or have previously been abused. In that post from two years ago, I wrote:

[O]n the left there are cries for more comprehensive sex education and access, and on the right there is moral panic and proclamations that promoting abstinence is the only way. What the conservative opinion ignores/obscures is not only the unrealistic nature of their plan, but also the fact that engaging in sexual activity is not always a choice, and that refusing to talk about sex means also refusing to talk about what healthy, consensual sex actually is. And while greater access to and education about contraception is certainly needed, those of us on the left generally fail to note that greater access and education won’t help a teen who has been sexually traumatized and feels as though she does not own her own body. It seems that we may be focusing a good bulk of our efforts on an only partial solution, particularly in many communities of color where teen pregnancy rates are highest and sexual violence rates most disturbing.

Moral panics about “risky behavior” — which are really just a form of rape apologism and victim-blaming — aren’t helping. Research into why teens who have unprotected sex do so and a dedication to addressing the many varied forms of sexual violence plaguing our communities just might.

Trigger Warning for extreme homophobia, including homophobic language and death wishes, as well as discussions of suicide.

Last Wednesday, as many of you are likely aware, there was a call to wear purple in response to the recent spate of publicized suicides by LGBT youth who had been extensively bullied, and the event was dubbed Spirit Day. Many activists who have been working on these issues for a long time have pointed out that these suicides are nothing new but are only now receiving media attention, and that most of the publicity has surrounded the loss of white gay men to the exclusion of trans* youth, bisexual and lesbian youth, and queer youth of color. There were also criticisms of Spirit Day specifically.

But while it would seem that all people could support not bullying people to the point where they feel there is no way out but to kill themselves, the day also inevitably brought out “criticisms” from homophobic and transphobic bigots who think that LGBT youth killing themselves isn’t really such a bad thing, after all.

One such bigot who spewed his homophobia¹ wherever he could was Clint McCance, who is notable because he is not just a private citizen/bigot, but a board member for Midland school district in Arkansas.

“Seriously they want me to wear purple because five queers killed themselves. The only way im wearin it for them is if they all commit suicide. I cant believe the people of this world have gotten this stupid. We are honoring the fact that they sinned and killed thereselves because of their sin. REALLY PEOPLE.”

After being challenged by a commenter, this was Mr. McCance’s reply:

“No because being a fag doesn’t give you the right to ruin the rest of our lives. If you get easily offended by being called a fag then dont tell anyone you are a fag. Keep that shit to yourself. I dont care how people decide to live their lives. They dont bother me if they keep it to thereselves. It pisses me off though that we make a special purple fag day for them. I like that fags cant procreate. I also enjoy the fact that they often give each other aids and die. If you arent against it, you might as well be for it.”

“I would disown my kids they were gay. They will not be welcome at my home or in my vicinity. I will absolutely run them off. Of course my kids will know better. My kids will have solid christian beliefs. See it infects everyone.”

In his post, McCance doesn’t just make light of queer youth killing themselves as a result of a homophobic society that supports extensive shaming, shunning, harassment, and violence; he suggests that such youth killing themselves is a natural response to a non-heterosexual orientation, and a deserved one at that. He argues that harassment directed at gay people is deserved and asked for by the very act of being gay. And the context of his statements further suggest that “if they all commit suicide,” this would be a good thing and a benefit to society — a breathtaking display of hatred.

I’m inclined to state here that suicide is no joke, but the fact is that I don’t think McCance ever meant his statements to be taken as one. He seems deadly serious in his convictions — and I place a particular emphasis on the word deadly. Because words have an impact. Words matter. They matter, as we’ve been tragically shown over and over again, when slurs are being screamed in your face and devaluing your very personhood every single day. They matter when they’re threatening you with violence. They matter when they’re telling you that you’re better off just not existing. They can matter very, very much when you’re thinking of killing yourself, and a person in a position of authority over the policies of your own school says that your identity is so repulsive to him, he hopes that you do.

Words matter, too, because they back up real attitudes. Many parents do actually disown their children because of their sexual orientations or gender identities. Kids end up homeless all the time for this very reason. Or they stay closeted and terrified and hate themselves because they fear exactly this happening, usually with very good reason.

And many people do believe that gay people who contract HIV/AIDS deserve to die. We saw the effect of this attitude most prominently in the United States when the AIDS epidemic first hit during the Reagan era, and countless people died painful deaths hated, alone, and afraid. People still die disowned by their families in the U.S. today, and human rights violations against HIV-positive people are a worldwide epidemic. Precisely because of attitudes like the one that Clint McCance expressed above, that people with HIV deserve to die — and, even worse, that HIV is a legitimately serious, deadly disease whose existence is both beneficial and thrilling to those who do not have it.

McCance’s words matter not just because the ideas behind them they have a concrete real world impact, but because he is in a position of authority, in one of the currently least appropriate places I can imagine. He is an elected official, and he works for a school. While the suicides of LGBT students are currently making the news in unprecedented numbers. At a time where it’s possible that homophobia (and transphobia to a lesser extent because of lesser coverage) and the bullying that accompanies it might just be starting to be taken seriously by mainstream U.S. — or at least one can hope — a school board member is telling LGBT students in his district that they are worthless and disgusting, and that he literally hopes they die.

And this is the best he can offer when the public responds with outrage:

I reached McCance on his cell phone this morning about 8:30 a.m.. “I really can’t comment right now,” he said. He said he planned a meeting with a lawyer this morning and didn’t want to say anything further until he’d had that meeting. He did comment that the matter had “been blown out of proportion.”

Blown out of proportion. People are dying because of the kinds of things he said, he not only refuses to mourn but actually celebrates their deaths, and then claims the issue has been blown out of proportion.

The Arkansas Education Department has responded a bit more appropriately:

The Arkansas Department of Education strongly condemns remarks or attitudes of this kind and are dismayed to see that a school board official would post something of this insensitive nature on a public forum like Facebook. Because Mr. McCance is an elected official, the department has no means of dealing with him directly. However, the department does have staff who investigate matters of bullying in schools and we will monitor and quickly respond to any bullying of students that may occur because of this, as we have with other civil rights issues in the past.

Of course, condemning the remarks as simply “insensitive” suggests a serious case of Not Getting It.

The Arkansas School Board Association said:

Members of the Arkansas School Boards Association Board of Directors and staff were appalled to read the comments purportedly made by the Midland School Board member in which he denounces gay students. Our organization expects school board members to support the education and promote the welfare of all students in their districts. With 1,500-plus school board members in Arkansas, we are saddened that the comments made by one individual will reflect poorly on other board members who work hard on behalf of the children in their communities.

ASBA has no tolerance for bullying or attacks on children, and we certainly would not tolerate such actions, either physical or verbal, by adults.

When school board members take the oath of office, they swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Arkansas. ASBA expects board members to adhere to state and federal laws, and bullying would certainly fall under those statutes.

A concern for those officials who don’t actively want LGBT students dead over those LGBT students themselves also suggests misplaced anger and sadness.

While an elected official cannot simply be fired, it’s unclear whether there is a process to remove from office those officials who do not uphold the duties of their jobs, and/or flagrantly violate them — as wishing harassment, violence, and death against students within a school board’s district would indeed seem to fit the bill with regards to a school board member. But if not, one would think that at the very least, these governmental bodies and his co-board members could and should make a loud public demand for his resignation.

A protest was apparently held this morning. It should really go without saying that in light of these comments, an apology is frankly and patently not good enough. Nothing less than McCance resigning or somehow otherwise being removed from his position on the school board is an acceptable response to an incident that should have never occurred, and in a world that took the safety of LGBT youth seriously, never would have. And until everyone else holding a position of authority over Midland school district does everything in their power to not only renounce the remarks but ensure that McCance no longer has a job on the board, they too are liable for and implicitly endorse what he had to say, and any effect it has on their students.

UPDATE: Clint McCance has resigned.

Trigger Warning for graphic descriptions of violence against people with disabilities, school violence, and victim-blaming.

As evidenced by a recent post, violence of all kinds is a major problem in schools, and school administrations not only frequently fail to respond appropriately to said violence, they’re also often a direct part and/or cause of the problem.

Another example, this time of a lawsuit launched in response to non-sexual violence, was recently sent to me by Kali at Ithaca PAVE. Two years ago, a disabled child was assaulted by a bully on his school bus — as he screamed and cried for help, the school bus driver two seats in front of him watched the attack and did nothing. It took another student to stop the assault. The circumstances of the assault get even more egregious once it’s taken into account that the child’s individualized education plan states that he is to have an aide with him on the school bus — an aide who was most certainly not present on the day of the attack.

Now, years later, the elementary school student remains traumatized, afraid of school, and in need of further services as a direct result of the assault. And the school refuses to make appropriate changes to his education plan.

According to court documents, on May 5, Coolbaugh’s son got on the bus after school and sat three seats behind the bus driver Jeffrey Postle. Another student got on shortly after and sat near him, purposefully pushing into him. The student began slapping and kicking Coolbaugh’s son, which her son apparently interpreted as horseplay and not bullying in nature, the complaint says.

Coolbaugh’s complaint states the student then began kicking and pushing Coolbaugh’s son in a violent manner. He borrowed a pen from Postle and began making threatening stabbing motions toward Coolbaugh’s son.

The complaint states that an on-board video camera captured the events, and that the driver can be seen in the video glancing up in the rear-view mirror at the activity in the bus. The boys were within hearing and view of the driver, Coolbaugh alleges, but the driver made no attempt to stop the harassment or protect Coolbaugh’s son.

The student then began “beating (Coolbaugh’s son) with his fists and violently threw (him) into a seat behind Postle and upon the floor under the seat and then proceeded to pound (him) about the head and shoulders with his fists,” according to the complaint.

Coolbaugh’s son called out for help from the bus driver. The boys were eventually pulled apart by another student, court documents say.

…

“My client approached the district with these circumstances and the school district responded by failing to provide any of the specific request that my client had made,” Kopko said. He said the district refused to accept changes to the boy’s individualized educational plan. “Our contention is that this boy was emotionally traumatized by this assault such that he is in desperate need of additional educational services. That is the aim of the lawsuit – not so much monetary damages, but to give this child FAPE [free and appropriate public education].”

Surveillance footage of the assault as it is described above can be viewed here.

There are several things going on here, with regards to failures by the educational system to protect the students in its care and the treatment of people with disabilities by society at large.

Most readers here who have ever ridden a school bus will have at some point been on at least one end of bullying and harassment. Many will have at different points throughout their childhoods and adolescences acted as both bullies and victims — myself included among them. Big news stories since I stopped riding a school bus have left me with the impression that little has changed. School buses are places where bullies, harassment, and violence thrive. And as all current or past school bus passengers know, students with disabilities, particularly cognitive or intellectual disabilities, are especially vulnerable.

Bullies seek out targets that are particularly vulnerable and who lack social support. By therefore choosing targets who face systemic marginalization on the basis of identity, they’re simply being perceptive about who society values and will bother to support.

In terms of how the driver in this case responded, I think that we’re talking about a case of basic human decency. A student was literally screaming out in distress, and not only did he fail to pull the bus over and help the student, he didn’t so much as utter a word. Adults, no matter what their occupation or relation to the children involved, are ethically obligated in situations like that to do something. That it took another child to take action is despicable.

But recognizing the bus driver’s individual failure and placing the responsibility where it belongs, it’s also important to note that while things can vary greatly among different school districts, training for bus drivers in handling such episodes is frequently limited or even non-existent. It’s not just an individual failure, but a systemic one. Further, while this was clearly a major episode, recognizing and responding to smaller ones while trying to do one’s primary job — safely driving a bus full of children — can be extremely difficult.

I know that when I was a kid, I would have met suggestions of school bus chaperons with horror. For me, at the time, the bus was a place of freedom. And I still think that places where kids can be kids without facing the constantly watching eye of adults are important. But I now know that a part of that supposed “freedom” was my ability to pick on students more vulnerable than I was and the ability of students less vulnerable than I was to pick on me. I know that a part of the “freedom” was enabling of racist, ableist, sexist, homophobic, classist, and fatphobic harassment. I know that it was watching plenty of assaults, most of which I have probably forgotten, including numerous sexual assaults against my friends — all of which faced no repercussions.

And I know that all of this didn’t happen because “it’s what kids do,” but because it’s what kids think adults do. And I now know that as kids, we sadly weren’t all that far off in our suspicions.

Schools have a responsibility to counteract this perception not only through not tolerating this kind of behavior among students, but also by modeling their own behavior to ensure that the perception is at least a little bit less true. Right now, the Trumansburg Central School District is clearly doing a very poor job on all fronts.

After failing to provide an aide to the student who was explicitly supposed to have been provided with one,¹ the school has since failed to take responsibility for its disregard for students with disabilities and willingness to treat their needs as secondary to those of other students. The disregard continues, with the school claiming that the assault was not their fault, and therefore it’s not their responsibility to provide the student with a new education plan — even though the student needs such a plan to effectively learn in their school. This final point is what the lawsuit is most directly about. Despite the fact that it should not matter who is responsible when it comes to whether or not the school is obligated to provide all of its students with an accessible and appropriate learning environment, the school’s line is “not our fault, not our problem.”

They’re also engaging in some mighty nice victim-blaming:

The complaint says that the district failed Coolbaugh’s son in several ways, by not protecting him from bullying, not properly implementing the provisions of his IEP, not adequately training and supervising its employees, and other ways. Prior bullying leading up to May 5 put the district on notice that Coolbaugh’s son was facing a dangerous situation and the district could have anticipated further problems, the complaint says.The district denies that anyone could have foreseen the alleged harassment and claims Coolbaugh’s son instigated the altercation, that he was a voluntary participant in the conflict and was aware of the risks of roughhousing on the bus.

So no one could have foreseen that something like this might happen, but dammit, that kid knew what he’d be getting himself into if it did. This kind of talking out both sides of their mouths excuse-making — who knew that this could happen? except the victim, of course, who totally should have known better — ringing any bells for any one else? These are clear echos of rape culture and more proof of how all forms of violence and oppression are connected.

Many members of the community are also doing a poor job modeling basic decency and anti-ableist attitudes. While seeming to be a clear-cut case, the comments on the linked article (trigger warning) are also filled with victim-blaming, both against the child and his mother. They range from calling the mother “sue-happy” to saying that bullying is a part of growing up to arguments that the mother could just place her child in a private school to allegations that this is her fault for not driving him to school herself.

There’s a lot of apologism and classism in these comments — not everyone can afford private school, not everyone has a car, not everyone’s job has a schedule that allows them to drive their kid to school — but also a lot of ableism. The understanding here is that abled kids are “normal” and deserve to have their needs met, while disabled ones do not. The attitude is that students with disabilities, and all people with disabilities, are on their own, with no obligation from society at large to be decent and as equally accommodating to them as it is to those without disabilities. The consensus for these folks is that we — as individuals, as institutions, as a society — do not have the same responsibility to protect people with disabilities as we do towards all other people. In these people’s view, the rights that abled people have to be safe and go about their lives free of violence do not apply to people with disabilities.

And that’s how these kinds of assaults happen — not just because one kid was an ableist jerk, but because far too many of us are generally ableist jerks, who will similarly deny certain people’s bodily rights and autonomy.

Trigger Warning for rape apologism/denialism and discussions of sexual violence and rape culture.

School is supposed to be a safe place for students to learn and interact with their peers. But as far too marginalized persons know, schools frequently present an environment that is the exact opposite, from being sites of sexualized gender-based violence, to racialized violence, to homophobic and transphobic violence, and other forms of physical assault and emotional injury. Too often, we think of harassment and violence in schools as “the way things are” — how they have always been, how they will always be, and something we are all helpless to change. Rarely do we recognize that these kinds of traumas don’t have to be a part of growing up, but are usually just an exaggerated (or usually exaggerated) reflection of what takes place in adult spaces.

And even more rarely do we discuss how the schools themselves, those tasked to protect students and make schools a safe place, are actively reinforcing and/or perpetuating violence themselves.

This weekend, Amandaw linked to an article on her Tumblr about a lawsuit in which a school allegedly made a rape victim “bait” in a “sting operation” to catch teens “having sex” after school. But it gets worse. Because Upper St. Clair High School failed to provide safe exit from the school to the victim, as one responsible teacher originally proposed, and instead forced her to stay on school grounds, she was raped again, along with another girl.

According to the brief by the student’s attorney, on Feb. 4, 2008, the girl went to one of her teachers, Esther von Waldow, and told her that a boy, with whom she’d had previous problems, had forced her to have sex with him after school. The Post-Gazette does not identify victims of sexual assault and has not identified the accused rapist, who pleaded guilty in juvenile court to sexual assault.

The girl told Ms. von Waldow that he forced another student to have sex, as well.

Ms. von Waldow, according to the brief, immediately went to school administrators with concerns and offered several options to make sure the girls in question got home safely. They included offering herself to walk the girls to their school bus.

But, the filing said, school Principal Michael Ghilani had a different idea.

“Instead, Ghilani wanted to keep Jane Doe on school property and not let her leave. Ghilani’s plan, known as the ‘sting operation,’ was to use Jane Doe as ‘bait’ to lead the school administrators to [the boy] and perhaps other girls.”

According to a court filing submitted by the school district, Dr. Ghilani didn’t believe that the students were in danger or that any safety concerns were present. Instead, he thought students were having consensual sex in school after hours.

He devised a plan to have school police officers follow the students in question to determine who they were and where they were going.

“Security personnel followed the students. Whether the sexual activity was alleged to be consensual or nonconsensual would not have altered the plan,” Upper St. Clair said in its brief. “The plan to was to monitor the students and stop the students before any sexual activity occurred.”

The officers followed the students and believed that they had gone home for the day.

However, an officer working night duty later saw on a school surveillance camera that the boy and another girl were back on the premises.

Though the officer then did rounds to find them, he never did.

The girl’s attorneys contend that two girls were raped in the stairwell that afternoon, including their client.

“Ghilani’s ‘sting operation,’ which prevented von Waldow from placing Jane Doe on her bus and out of harm’s way so that she could be used as bait, resulted in her being violently raped. Ghilani and the school district acted in utter disregard of her welfare.”

Oh boy.

If the allegations against the school district are true, I really can’t imagine a greater breach of student safety and trust. I don’t care how many security officers are following or supposed to be following the students in question — rape victims should never be used as “bait,” let alone as a means to catch students having consensual sex. That this was the plan doesn’t seem to be denied, but instead rather implicitly confirmed through statements by school representatives reproduced up above.

The logic behind the idea is terrifying.  One is left presuming that Principal Ghilani saw Jane Doe’s report of being rape as not falling under the category of “real” rape, and thus related to the consensual sex he was trying to stamp out. It’s an incredibly revealing tactic, as it shows that Ghilani strongly prioritized busting students having consensual sexual contact (in an admittedly inappropriate location) over adequately and responsibly responding to claims of sexual violence. As is so common, consensual female sexuality is seen as a bigger threat to order than male sexual violence.

In its defense, the school district only confirms that this was their line of thinking.¹ Rather than denying that any “sting” was planned at all — apparently, there’s too much evidence that it was real — they’ve just resorted to calling Jane Doe a lying whore:

But in court documents filed by the school district, there are allegations that relationships between the boy in question and several of the girls who claim to be victims were consensual. The district argues that the girls liked him, and were jealous of the others.

In one court filing, the district said that it could dispute whether the student who filed the lawsuit has been raped.

But following the incident, the girl’s attorneys contend in documents, the suspect sent the girl this text message:

“im soo sry i didn’t mean 2 make u cry. i’m cant believe i just raped u well bout time u read dis i mite b dead.”

School officials also claim that they knew nothing of any sexual assaults by the boy until the morning of Feb. 5, 2008 — the day after the alleged “sting.”

So not only did Jane Doe make up both rapes, but the sting operation came about because the principal thought that the student had reported consensual sex to her teacher? Yes, I see how that makes sense. Throw in something about how victims of sexual violence really wanted it and like to fight over their rapist, and no one will notice the illogical nature of the claim! Everyone eats that jealous, boy-obsessed teenage girl shit right up. Also, stuff about how girls and women who claim rape are really just dirty sluts in denial.

I’m honestly not even sure which facet of this case I find most appalling — the lesson that if you report being raped to your school, they’ll use you as a method to catch other students doing allegedly naughty things rather than protecting you; or the lesson that if you report being raped to your school, they’ll respond to their own culpability in the situation by telling the national media that you wanted it, anyway.

I guess that if there’s any “good news” in this case, it’s the fact that we don’t have to choose between condemning the two. The entire story is filled to the brim with victim-blaming, rape apologism, and enabling of sexual violence. And barring an enormous bombshell that the Upper St. Clair School District has in its back pocket, what they’ve admitted to alone shows that they’re responsible for repeatedly and persistently fostering an environment where sexual violence is encouraged, both by placing the situation on the back burner and refusing to listen to rape victims when they come forward.