WV School Punished Rape Victim by Moving Her Back a Grade, Attorney General Says
West Virginia’s attorney general filed a civil rights lawsuit against a school district he said had failed to report sexual assault claims and then retaliated against the girls who reported the abuse.
Attorney General Patrick Morrissey asked a court for an injunction Thursday against the Mingo County Board of Education, where two girls claim they were molested and sexually assaulted by two male students at the school and on a field trip.
The girls were seventh-graders in 2012, when they said two boys restrained and groped them on a school bus and in a school computer lab, and one of the girls said one of the boys sexually assaulted her on a school trip to Charleston.
According to court filings, the girls were threatened with discipline and administrators at Burch Middle School retaliated against them.
“Every action taken by (the) defendants was either to minimalize the allegations against the boys and/or to protect the alleged male juvenile perpetrators,” according to the filing, signed by Assistant Attorney General J. Robert Leslie.
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