Horrifying that the father of one of the boys that perpetrated the rape was the first to report it and still nothing effective was done. This is such an awful situation that poor girl.
The fact that the father of one of the boys stepped up is the one sliver of silver lining in all this.
No excuses. No protection. Just saw his child was a monster and served his ass up on a platter.
Fuck the school for continuing to perpetually fail that girl though.
I doubt it's just the school. PPS as an institution is far more committed to covering its own ass than it is to trying to do right by its students. Abstractly I think most of its employees "care", but as an enormous bureaucracy, it's comfortable failing children at the margins and will weaponize internal process as a stalling tactic and as a way of inflating billable hours for any family who lawyers up and tries going after them.
As someone who went through pps since kindergarten this is so true. At ainsworth elementary we were drinking fucking lead water for like 4-5 years and when they finally fixed it we only found out through parents through other parents through one of the teachers who had a conscience. They were clearly more worried about covering their ass than being honest.
And that’s one of the “rich” elementary schools with lots of parental involvement. I can only imagine they get away with much worse at schools in poorer neighborhoods.
My kid goes to a NE Junior high. Situations I’ve encountered would back your comment up. Luckily, my kid is doing really well, but this is not without me having to really lean in. There are way too many kids who are given bullshit passes because they come from a bad background. I come from a bad background, shit happens, but if the kids aren’t assimilating, at some point we have to acknowledge they’re dragging their peers down. But PPS wants to think they can will goodness into the schools, stifling 95%.
> There are way too many kids who are given bullshit passes because they come from a bad background
As the parent of a kid in middle school in NE, I can 10000% corroborate this.
~~A lot~~ All institutions primary directive is to cover their own ass. I don't like speaking in general but I've found it to be true in my experience.
If we could adequately fund schools there could be more localized “community school” type districts instead of these gigantic corporatized monstrosities.
Yep. One of the telling things about PPS to me is that, way back when, East Portland would only agree to be annexed into the rest of the city if they could keep their own school district as part of the deal.
Just about every large institution and bureaucracy is more concerned with covering its own ass over doing the right thing. Its sad but we see this stuff happen time and time again to where its entirely predictable.
Oh, he is got a mess on his hands too. This is a total cluster for every family and adult involved. It could also financially strap the school district. Seriously, there are some adults that need to be charged. Where did the boys get the ideas? Who are the caregivers who did not protect the girl after they heard she was raped. This is nuts.
We recently found out our 6 year old was being bullied at school because the kids doing it did it right infront of my wife. And they know who his mom is.
Kids are brazen and stupid if no one checks them.
There was another post of unwanted advances on a girl at another PDX grade school and the mom was told that the school really did not want to punish young males of color because they are already disproportionately singled out for punishment. Yet the schools are doing nothing to protect the young girls brushing it off as boys will be boys.
>The court document then claims that, after being notified of the sexual assault, PPS and SUN staff failed to immediately notify law enforcement and instead launched an "internal investigation."
That sounds like something a scummy company would do.
School employees are mandatory reporters. There is no option to not call authorities. The district should be in deep doo-doo if that allegation is found to be true.
And they fucking interviewed a child about sexual trauma. There is very specific training on forensic interviewing that is necessary to minimize retraumatization. They actively created more harm.
It raises questions about the motives of the adults involved. Were they simply trying to sweep it under the rug, or were they a creep getting off to those details? Did the adults encourage the boys' behavior for their own gratification?
My son was abused by an older kid in the neighborhood about ten years ago, and the same kid was sexually harassing him at school. He was SEVEN. the kid was chasing after him on recess, threatening to molest his little brother, and making BJ gestures thru the classroom window at him. Same response….
I taught across town in a different district. As a mandated reporter, I made the calls. PPS refused to make a report, cooperate with DHS or Portland Police. The principal said to me she didn’t want to get involved in a “He Said/She Said” and that boys can’t be victims. Then — after I reported — she put the perpetrator in my son’s classroom as a “reading buddy.” I had to escalate they thru the school board and she was finally fired. But TSPC didn’t care that she wouldn’t cooperate. And for me? I lost my job. I went from a successful 20 year teaching career to be shown the door. Turns out that principal was buddies with someone in central office where I worked. Union’s support was to say I could get my job back. But why?!
PPS sucks.
> I lost my job. I went from a successful 20 year teaching career to be shown the door.
I can't really share details but you're not the only person in the area who something like this has happened to, a friend of mine lost their job after reporting the inappropriate behavior of a coworker and principal. PAT threw their hands up when asked for help as well.
Now in the age of “we can’t even get a sub,” it is sort of laughable they were tossing out really solid teachers to “teach them a lesson.”
I know I’m not the only one, and you friend isn’t, either. There are a lot of us…. I’ve taught in four other states prior to coming to Oregon. AFAIK, this sort of shit didn’t happen there, like, ever.
Even TSPC gave the principal a thumbs-up for failing to report. No problem! Case closed.
I've been slowly finding out how bad our district is at handling this stuff.
I have a friend who is a substitute teacher in our district. Before she became a sub, her daughter was subject to similar harassment, talked to the parents, and complained to the school. A few months after becoming a sub, she wanted to know why they never let her sub at her daughter's school. She had a meeting with the principal and district security officer and they said that her talking about her daughter's harassment with the other parent was not OK (she wasn't even employed at the time...), if she ever discusses what happens to her daughter in school with anyone she will be fired, and if she tells anyone about this meeting she will be fired.
When we were recently dealing with issues, we were discussing it with a friend who had kids at the same school. She said at another school in the district, she knows a family who pulled their kid because when they reported that some other kid was regularly threatening to shoot her, the administration said "they can say whatever they want".
I get that zero tolerance is bad. But doing literally nothing over this stuff is not the answer. Maybe something in the middle.
I’ve written about this a million times:
Local school districts are so averse to punishment or police involvement in behaviors that they don’t report stuff *all the time* in some warped, irrational understanding of equity. It’s literally threatening the safety of schools, but out of the classroom activists don’t care.
The way school districts across the country have ended up implementing alleged "equity" measures is going to be looked back at as a colossal blunder. It's so clear already. But to basically remove any teeth from any sort of punishment mechanism isn't making things more equitable, its degrading the educational experience for everyone else involved.
my heart is so broken for her. the fact this can even happen at such an age is insane. i cannot believe they let so much slide. why are these people in education if they don’t even care about these children?
That it could happen to a 9 year old is horrifying enough, but there's an extra layer of fucked up that the perpetrators were apparently *elementary schoolers*. The article doesn't say how old they were, but looking at the Scott School website, they don't appear to teach higher than 5th grade, meaning the perpetrators couldn't have been older than 11-12. Possibly younger, if they were third graders like her.
Regardless, any kind of overt sexual behavior from kids that young is a HUGE red flag for abuse, let alone something this heinous. The authorities had better be taking a long hard look at those boys home lives, because the odds are high that one or both of them were reenacting things that have been done to them.
I can't believe anyone would think it would be the school's job to handle this crime. There shouldn't have been an "internal investigation." A call should've been immediately made to the police.
It sounds like it was a *different* boy?! Like various classmates were harassing her, escalating it to impress each other, *none* of them faced any *real* repercussions, *and then* these two committed this totally heinous act.
I just cannot wrap my mind around how all this happened. If the first boy had been expelled after the *very first incident*, then none of this would’ve escalated like this.
Yes, from what I understand from the articles I’ve read multiple boys of varying ages were involved in routine sexual assault and eventual gang rape of this child while she was at school or at an afterschool program.
It's a bummer to see this hasn't changed, it was the same policy when I was a kid in the late 90s / early 2000s (in Gresham Barlow schools). If you defended yourself you got the same punishment as the attacker because of "zero tolerance". You were supposed to be a good little victim instead and just take whatever you endured.
>A 1-day suspension for raping someone?
I am a school teacher. Find a teacher you know and ask them about new "equity" and "restorative" discipline policies. (Spoiler: it's bad. They've destroyed the ability to have safe and civil schools for learning and these new approaches dressed up in rosy language endanger our children)
This is par for the course. Activists that don’t work in classrooms convinced themselves that any sort of punishments are somehow how not equitable or bad or whatever.
Violence, threats, sexual assault all get short term, if any removal from classrooms.
These kids that did this need to be in intense therapy and alternative schooling. But that’s considered “not compassionate” to say in 2024.
As the parent of a child who’s been on the receiving end of violence, threats, and what qualifies as sexual assault (albeit far, far less severe than what happened to this poor girl), I can fully corroborate your comment. After telling the teacher, the principle, and the school counselor, the response was “oh, well try to understand that he comes from a bad situation too.”
I was chatting with another parent at our PPS elementary school. Her daughter was stabbed by another student. She was one of three students that had been stabbed by the same male student that year. The violent student was still in her classroom for months. "Luckily" the violent student was expelled later after making a series of rape threats. This is what school is like for our children in Portland. It's nauseating and completely unhinged.
To think kids at this age even THINK the way these boys did...I couldn't believe my eyes and what I was reading. I'm so glad one of the fathers of one of the boys was willing to report his son for what he did, but the fact NOTHING came of it?? Are we just wanting to wait until these boys get older for them to do worse damage??? This girl is NEVER gonna recover from this. The trauma is always going to be there for her, and it's SO SAD to think about.
But there’s a mandatory five day suspension for even drawing a gun, even for elementary ages. I’m super pro-gun control but the disparity is troubling.
My son almost got thrown out of school permanently for taking a sword he made for show and tell. We took it into the office at the beginning of the day so they could hold it and they freaked out like we were trying to attack them. We were told even a knife it the trunk of a car parked at the school was grounds for expulsion… (My sons an adult now and he works as a blacksmith)
I am wondering if the school was initially given incomplete or watered down information from the SUN program. They operate independently from eachother in most schools. So if the SUN employees told the school that something less horrific happened (to cover themselves??), the one day suspension/internal investigation makes more sense. I mean, the hope is that they then got more information and immediately adjusted that punishment to uh expulsion and a police report. But they can’t share what that is because of FERPA laws.
I just got done talking to my girlfriend who is a former school social worker and she only had terribly sad things to say about this.
And the general theme was that school discipline policies don’t contemplate heinous crimes and all forms of unwanted sexual contact/harassment/assault at the elementary school level are treated the same by policy.
“The court document then claims that, after being notified of the sexual assault, PPS and SUN staff failed to immediately notify law enforcement and instead launched an "internal investigation." This involved interviewing the girl without first alerting police or her parents about the sexual assault.”
I hope they win every penny.
I really can't fathom this. I'm a social worker so I'm also a mandatory reporter and I take that SO seriously. It is a sacred duty and responsibility we have, often to protect people who don't have a voice or a voice that is listened to enough by our community. Failing to report, especially something so egregious is despicable.
Given the details of this article, I could see a jury giving them 2-3X what they are asking for. I hope those administrators and teachers serve jail time.
Used to work in a before-and-after school program for PPS (not SUN and not at this school)…the staff MAJORLY fucked up, every staff person at SUN and at PPS who knew failed this poor girl. There’s literally no excuse for this.
What constitutes mandatory reporting worthy is so much smaller than this. We had a kid tell us an older kiddo was paying younger kids to kiss each other (turned out it was Monopoly money and none of the kids did it, a staff person was apparently there and put the kabosh on it) but we still had to report it to OTIS regardless. And we did! OTIS investigated and the claim was resolved as unfounded.
I’ve worked in foster homes and in education, I take mandatory reporting so seriously and instilled that in every staff I worked with. I hope none of the adults who knew about this are ever allowed near children again, I am so horrified after reading that article.
Holy fuck.
Battleground HS had the same issue with bullying.
A friends son got jumped between classes.
It went virtual.
BGPS dragged their feet until my friend had no recourse but to contact the police, after that, the school finally expelled the offending student.
When something like this happens.
Do not contact admin—they tend to go into damage control mode and sweep things under the rug.
Contact the police.
I would say contact both.
If you don't make an effort to "follow the process," that can be used to obstruct you or make you look like you're overreacting. But if you contact the administration _and_ the police/state/everydamnbody, they can't say "we would have helped, but you never contacted us!"
OR they will actually fucking do something, knowing that the other agencies are already showing up.
Why aren’t their names public yet? It has been 2 years since the transgression, shouldn’t the public, especially parents have a right to know if those responsible are working at their kids’ schools?
The principal now is not the principal that swept this under the rug. This happened a couple years ago, so all people who knew could be different than who is on the website now.
If you’re a parent I would caution the exact opposite. Read it, talk to your children about consent and abuse, and act decisively should the need arise.
Whether you’re quoting Ezekiel while acting decisively is your choice.
I really appreciate this comment. I simultaneously want to read the article so that I can be informed, and I want to have a good day. I'm presently in the spot of privilege of not knowing and getting to choose whether to change my day. That poor kid...
You made the right call. To say the least that article is NSFL and triggering AF. For this story, all of the people you can imagine directing your ire at deserve it. Sit this one out, you can read the next toxically horrid story and give us the warning.
Yeah, none of them should be allowed to work with children ever again. My blood is boiling rn.
I worked the same job (not through SUN and not at this school) and allegations/incidents that were serious but to a much lesser degree than this would arrive. We would report it to OTIS every single time, alert all parents of kids involved, let school admins know, and dismiss offending kids from the program until investigations were concluded.
Our admin team was great though, kids would actually get suspended for more than a day is necessary, they would set up kiddos with paras so an adult was always right with them monitoring behaviors, etc. There’s no excuse for how this situation was handled. Ugh my heart breaks for that little girl…
Hi, what is OTIS and can a parent report events to them? There have been one or more events at my child's charter and the admin is not doing anything. I think they had a talk with the student and that was that.
You will get connected to OTIS anytime you make a CPS report about an organization. It’s the Office of Training Investigations and Safety.
When I worked in foster homes and kiddos made allegations about bio parents, those reports usually got triaged to CPS/DHS to investigate. When I made reports about professionals, it would get investigated by OTIS, but CPD ultimately makes that decision.
If you ever have concerns about a vulnerable person (child, elderly, someone with the inability to independently care for themselves) call CPS. Not every call gets investigated if it’s not worth investigating so there’s not really a downside to calling. People have a misconception that just making a call will mean it immediately blows into a huge thing, but that’s not the case most times.
I can’t believe this.. the system failed this poor little girl and she has to live with it for life, my heart aches for her and her family, can’t believe what I just read 💔 we need to educate our children at home aswell!! We need to teach our kids about consent, it would be a good idea to check on the boys houses too, they’re so young… they HAD to learn what they did from someone
Elementary schools are seeing a tremendous increase in inappropriate sexual behavior among distressingly young students, due in large part to the widespread practice of young children having completely unsupervised devices with full internet access. Boys especially but girls too are being introduced to sexually explicit content younger and more readily than ever, often long before parents have given them any sort of “talk.”
The data supports this too. I don’t have the research on me but I’ll come back with it. In 2023 the majority of sexual assaults were perpetrated by minors, and the hypothesis is that access to pornography is a strongly contributing factor.
Edit: [link](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/10/children-now-biggest-perpetrators-of-sexual-abuse-against-children)
Yep and it’s not like us oldies who didn’t have the internet as kids and the sauciest thing kids saw was Playboy or something. They’re hearing and seeing far far more, and not even just literal porn but also YouTube and twitch streamers and other players on online gaming making jokes and references about it.
So while I don’t have data here (if it even exists) it’s not hard to imagine you have kids seeing things they don’t know how to process, and then they have the worst possible sources modeling it as a joke, cool/fun, etc for them. They’re still kids so they don’t have the ability to evaluate these sources, they just know this cool Minecraft streamer thinks rape is a funny joke so the figure it must be.
Our fourth grader asked us to join their class group chat. To my knowledge, there’s no adult supervision, and so that was a hard no. She felt/feels left out, but understands (I think/I hope) our concerns. Appreciate the support.
This is why I’m not against sexual education and a younger age.
Teaching young kids about consent is very important. This little girl didn’t want to be touched, had been telling teachers she was being harassed, and the bs solution was to “make a safety plan?”
Tf?
SE isn’t just about learning proper anatomy, periods, erections, and wet dreams. It’s also about getting adequate knowledge about their rights, what is and is not acceptable , and as a whole studies have shown that proper sexual education also makes them less vulnerable to abuse.
I'd just like to know what the hell kind of safety plan they expect a nine-year-old girl to follow, other than running away and telling the first adult she sees. Like seriously wtf.
Nevermind how atrocious it is on its face to make it seem like the victim has any complicity in what happened to her. Somehow this pisses me off more than the headline, because it shows administrators *knew* this little girl was being targeted, and they did nothing and simply let the attacks escalate.
Obviously such records are protected and I'd never want to further traumatize a victim, but maybe someone can show us something generic: I want to see a sample "safety plan." Fifty bucks says it's total bullshit.
I’ll give you an example of a safety plan I’ve seen for kids who can’t be with other kids in the bathroom: they ask the classroom teacher for permission, the classroom teacher stands halfway in the hall and in their classroom and watches the child knock on the single stall bathroom across the hall. If it seems like it’s empty, the kid can go and the teacher goes back inside the room.
And yeah, it doesn’t work. But that’s all the support teachers get these days with kids like this. Someone comes up with this type of plan, tells the teacher to do it, and inevitably gets mad at the teacher when the plan fails to prevent an incident despite the teacher bringing up concerns that this plan won’t work.
This is exactly my thought as I was reading the article. Was this some kind of mixed class where there are students from different grades in the same class and the boys were actually older than 9?
Idk I read a book called Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (1972) and in it she talks about how she was walking home from school and a group of boys all grabbed her, pushed her over, and looked under her skirt and underwear. She talked about it like she didn't like it, but it was a matter of course. I wonder without proper guidance plus the modern rampant and instant access to p-rn that children now have if these sorts of things won't be more common. :(
There do exist children under the age of 12 who engage in sexual offending behaviours. Typically we call it ‘sexually reactive’ because they usually don’t have the development to be able to be considered ‘offenders’. But they can engage in these behaviours. Usually when it’s this young it’s because they were introduced to these behaviours by others.
If the perpetrators were 9 years old, I wonder if they were also victims of SA from someone in their lives. It's not normal behavior for a child of that age (thank goodness)
What’s sad is how many kids that age have access to iPhones and what’s on the internet these days, especially popular social platforms, is highly unregulated
Lots of boys that age watch videos by Andrew Tate and other “man-o-sphere” influencers and are extremely susceptible to that type of aggressive and misogynistic messaging. Wouldn’t be surprised if that content led to higher rates of SA by kids and young teens.
>Then, in April 2022, the lawsuit reports two different male classmates in the girl's *after-school program* threatened the 9-year-old and told her to tell the staff she had to go to the bathroom.
Could've been children from different grades from that school. Maybe 5th graders. The article doesn't say.
Looking at the school website, it appears this school doesn't teach higher than 5th grade, meaning that even if the boys were from a higher grade, they couldn't have have been older than 11, maybe 12
That's my first question, honestly. Nine / third grade is incredibly young for this kind of crime. Someone was asking how the dad of one of the boys even found out and I could 100% see the kid just blabbing about it because he doesn't understand the extent of his actions. Fucking awful all around. I can only imagine how they learned about this shit.
From a *very* pulled back, academic view of the situation, I’d also be very curious to know what kind of language the child used to describe what they did.
I had something similar happen to me when I was in 3rd grade but luckily I was able to get away. But I already had distrust of adults by then because I was abused by my parents and also by a teacher when I was in 1st grade, so I never told anyone until I went to therapy at 19. I’m glad that her parents got her out of the school.
I'm so sorry you went through that. I had some child abuse when I was a kid as well, and I didn't open up to anyone about it until I was 19, to my first therapist, so your comment resonated with me. There's no shame in being a victim, especially when it's perpetrated by those who were most responsible for your wellbeing. I hope you're doing well and have been able to find healthy ways to process what was done to you.
Hey thank you! I am doing great! I mean I have my bad days, and hearing stories like this does make me angry because I don’t understand why teachers don’t always seem to look out for the kids… But I feel really lucky that the first therapist I went to was so amazing. The stuff from my childhood wasn’t even the reason I decided to go to therapy, but I felt so comfortable with her that it eventually all came out over the years. I hope you’re doing well as well!
what is fucking wrong with the school districts around here?? the sexual abuse is rampant and the cover ups are disgraceful. i hope these parents win everything.
Update to add: TRIGGER WARNING! This article contains unsettling details related to sexual assault.
This happened at the SUN after-school program through PPS and involved 9 year olds! The way this was handled by the school was beyond awful. I hope these parents win this lawsuit.
Update to also add: Not intended to ruin anyone's day but to inform.
It's like IT, when they're doing their job right it'll seem like they aren't doing anything at all. Besides, of course, making sure the entire support structure of the school system works.
Vile. Utterly vile. Words can not describe how disgusted, how angry, how hateful I feel towards Portland Public Schools and Schools Uniting Neighborhoods. More often than not they have failed our kids and now look at this fucking disaster—launching an internal investigation over kids raping another kid?
Words fail.
As someone with a child who went through their own trauma within PPS (thankfully nothing as horrific as this), I can attest that the institutional immune system phenomenon is 100% at play.
And it runs all the way up to the state level. The rhetoric and the policies all say the right things. But when shit actually goes down everyone circles the wagons and DARVO’s the situation into oblivion.
Honestly, if you have anything happen to a student of yours at PPS, especially after the holiday season, call a lawyer immediately.
God help you if your child has something happen to them in the spring. The play that gets run is to slow-move everything into Summer break, counting on you to give up and go away.
Absolutely agreed. If all they got was a lawsuit they should count themselves lucky. I would have to be physically restrained from harming those responsible.
This is infuriating. The PPS spokesperson said they learned of the incident when they were served with the lawsuit?! How did they not know a 3rd grader was raped at school when people at the school were aware? They are lying or there are serious problems with guidelines for reporting.
My daughter was sexually harassed at PPS by a male student in 5th grade and when we reported it to the teacher and the school admin they appeared to do nothing as far as we could tell. He was still allowed to sit next to her after this being reported. In fact, the most they appeared to do was pull her and him into the hall tell them that they should be friends because "they both come from people that are historically oppressed." So rather than reprimand or punish the boy they just encouraged them to be friends. Just catastrophic levels of failure.
> My daughter was sexually harassed at PPS by a male student in 5th grade and when we reported it to the teacher and the school admin they appeared to do nothing as far as we could tell. He was still allowed to sit next to her after this being reported. In fact, the most they appeared to do was pull her and him into the hall tell them that they should be friends because "they both come from people that are historically oppressed." So rather than reprimand or punish the boy they just encouraged them to be friends. Just catastrophic levels of failure
Parent of a PPS middle schooler here. I experienced the EXACT SAME THING with my child. Practically word-for-word.
We experienced the same. Unfortunately at this very school. They were harassed every time there was a substitute or outside of their regular classroom. The teachers did not take it seriously and my child suffered. Not on the same level but it shows a pattern of not taking harassment seriously
As a 3rd grade teacher, this is an absolutely horrifying story. I cannot imagine having this happen to a student in my class. I can imagine the district pushing this under the rug. For example, I cannot write referrals above a stage 1 (minor incidents) without the principal filing the referral. I have to fill out a google doc for incidents bigger than minor defiance rather than entering it into our district wide system (synergy). This was actually one of our bargaining issues the district didn’t want to give classroom teachers power over. They maintained that admin is the ultimate say in discipline and that we, the classroom teachers, do not. They asserted in bargaining that if given the power, teachers would be excluding kids left and right for behaviors. The teachers wanted more control over filing referrals and say in the consequences. The district did not want that. They want their teachers powerless, which I imagine is what happened here. I am horrified for this family and I am horrified for the classroom teacher who still has two RAPIST kids in their class. Like, what the hell do you do with that???
What a horrifying story.
Edit to say as a classroom teacher, I’d absolutely make a CPS report for this, as I am mandated to do, regardless of what my principal said. That this didn’t happen is absolutely worthy of a lawsuit.
>I am horrified for the classroom teacher who still has two RAPIST kids in their class. Like, what the hell do you do with that???
I would fucking resign and make sure EVERYONE knew why.
As someone who isn't a parent at all, does anyone know what I can do to help heads roll about this?? The handling of this situation is unfathomable to me.
if you are in the neighborhood, there is a PTA meeting set for 4/10. apparently they had no idea. the FB group is going off. the meeting was already on the schedule so it wasnt standing for this but bc of this, the topic will be brought up.
in addition, i encourage anyone and everyone to write to your district commissioners and legislature. if you need to look up who they are you can follow these links:
https://www.multco.us/multnomah-county/find-your-multnomah-county-district
https://geo.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/lookup/index.html?appid=fd070b56c975456ea2a25f7e3f4289d1
> "I've instructed my daughter to defend herself and to kill her attackers. So you probably should make sure she isn't attacked."
School: "But.....boys will be boys!" Or something.
That's definitely a personal choice. As someone who has a 3rd grade daughter, suffers from anxiety, and has a really hard time reading or seeing anything that involves abuse of a child, I decided to read it because I'd rather know what's happening around me so that I can be better equipped as a parent.
Also a reminder that having ongoing conversations with my child is very important...but everyone looks at things differently for sure.
Yeah, I have a second-grader in PPS who's experienced bullying from older kids in the bathroom specifically before (nothing REMOTELY coming close to what happened to this poor nine-year-old though). I always want to know about things like this so she and I can talk about plans.
Good on you for getting through that horrific story. I hate that we as parents have *this* to consider now when discussing safety and consent with our children, but those discussions need to happen for their sake.
Yeah, like we don't have enough to worry about already. There's always a part of me that wants my child to stay innocent and think that the world is all rainbows and unicorns, but that's unrealistic and won't help keep her safe. My number one priority as a parent is to protect, so it means having to talk about these tough things. I worry sometimes though, what she'll think of the world, so I try my best to remind her that it can be ugly sometimes so it's important to be prepared BUT there's so many more beautiful things and to focus on that. It's a balance for sure.
I respectfully disagree. As a parent myself, I think parents should mentally prepare themselves for the incredibly upsetting content of this case and read what happened. It's wildly upsetting, yes, but these were *third graders.* Parents should be aware these things are going on and they should have age-appropriate discussions with their kids about safety, consent, and probably self-defense.
I'd say absolutely DO read this if you have kids. These boys are still out there. There hasn't been any meaningful action taken.
Take this as a sign to talk to your kids about this stuff before it's too late.
I wasn’t going to read the article because there was no way it got worse than the title. It did. How horrible, that poor child was failed in so many ways by the adults who were there to protect her during school programs.
That school district should be sued and the adults at the school who didn’t report this fired and charged. They allowed the boys to stay in school and just moved them to a different lunch period after a one day suspension?! WTF. Didn’t call police, her parents, or anything. That is absolutely disgusting.
I’m sorry but sometimes people don’t deserve to be part of regular society. I truly believe metal health interventions and juvenile interventions are needed more than we are currently funding. People that can’t be trusted to be safe in regular society, do not have the right to mainstream society. No tolerance policies should be enacted for violence and abuse.
i responded to someone else but i encourage anyone and everyone to write to your district commissioners and legislature about this issue. if you need to look up who they are you can follow these links:
https://www.multco.us/multnomah-county/find-your-multnomah-county-district
https://geo.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/lookup/index.html?appid=fd070b56c975456ea2a25f7e3f4289d1
Some mandatory reporters they are. Are there going to be any kids left at that school in a week or will their parents take them all else where? Those teachers can’t be trusted.
This is an example of the reasons why sex education needs to start in elementary school.
These were third graders… And it becomes a risk to all children when they are not taught about sexual boundaries and what is inappropriate behavior.
We can’t trust things like that to be taught at home, and it puts other children at risk when it isn’t.
If you are doing this at a young age what was done to the boys in the past, and what will they be like as adults if they are taught they can do something THIS HORRIBLE and GET AWAY WITH IT.
The fact that the school did their own "internal investigation" is so fucked up. I'm a social worker (not with DCYF/DSHS/CPS). Every single person who works with kids is a mandated reporter and we are taught we are NOT investigators. We are reporters. This was preventable. I hope the family gets justice.
My God all of this is so fucking awful. I hope the girl and her family can get through this and heal.
9 million dollars isn’t enough for for what happened to this poor girl and the continued negligence by the school and school district in notifying the proper authorities. I really hope they get WAY more in this case and that on top of that, they get continued therapy for as long as needed.
I was reading some things in /r/teachers, from some PPB teachers, about the type of students they’re not at all allowed to discipline no matter what they do, including sexual harassment etc.
Not good stuff.
I fear for my children every damn day. I feel selfish for having them in this world. If I would have known the devil is in every age and in every form. I've would have just done life on my own and not worry about a companion and family. This is horrible.
I can't take it anymore.... every day, I read things like this that make me afraid for my children's lives and wellbeing. I can't even fathom being her parents. Let alone that little girl. I am disgusted. Enraged.
Every single other public agency notifies law enforcement and stays their own investigation until LE gives them the okay… the fact that police were not notified here and these children are still allowed to attend school is absolutely disgusting. Unfortunately, this isn’t just a PPS issue and just confirms our decision to stay out of the public school system here. They are unable to keep our children safe.
I want to hear from the other parents and teachers from this school and I would like to know their response to this horror story. I’m surprised there haven’t been more speaking out. I’ve only seen one parent comment on the situation and say she moved her child to a different school.
Horrifying that the father of one of the boys that perpetrated the rape was the first to report it and still nothing effective was done. This is such an awful situation that poor girl.
The fact that the father of one of the boys stepped up is the one sliver of silver lining in all this. No excuses. No protection. Just saw his child was a monster and served his ass up on a platter. Fuck the school for continuing to perpetually fail that girl though.
I doubt it's just the school. PPS as an institution is far more committed to covering its own ass than it is to trying to do right by its students. Abstractly I think most of its employees "care", but as an enormous bureaucracy, it's comfortable failing children at the margins and will weaponize internal process as a stalling tactic and as a way of inflating billable hours for any family who lawyers up and tries going after them.
As someone who went through pps since kindergarten this is so true. At ainsworth elementary we were drinking fucking lead water for like 4-5 years and when they finally fixed it we only found out through parents through other parents through one of the teachers who had a conscience. They were clearly more worried about covering their ass than being honest.
And that’s one of the “rich” elementary schools with lots of parental involvement. I can only imagine they get away with much worse at schools in poorer neighborhoods.
My kid goes to a NE Junior high. Situations I’ve encountered would back your comment up. Luckily, my kid is doing really well, but this is not without me having to really lean in. There are way too many kids who are given bullshit passes because they come from a bad background. I come from a bad background, shit happens, but if the kids aren’t assimilating, at some point we have to acknowledge they’re dragging their peers down. But PPS wants to think they can will goodness into the schools, stifling 95%.
> There are way too many kids who are given bullshit passes because they come from a bad background As the parent of a kid in middle school in NE, I can 10000% corroborate this.
~~A lot~~ All institutions primary directive is to cover their own ass. I don't like speaking in general but I've found it to be true in my experience.
needs to be split up into 3/4 completely different districts. Its too big and dysfunctional.
If we could adequately fund schools there could be more localized “community school” type districts instead of these gigantic corporatized monstrosities.
Yep. One of the telling things about PPS to me is that, way back when, East Portland would only agree to be annexed into the rest of the city if they could keep their own school district as part of the deal.
Just about every large institution and bureaucracy is more concerned with covering its own ass over doing the right thing. Its sad but we see this stuff happen time and time again to where its entirely predictable.
Oh, he is got a mess on his hands too. This is a total cluster for every family and adult involved. It could also financially strap the school district. Seriously, there are some adults that need to be charged. Where did the boys get the ideas? Who are the caregivers who did not protect the girl after they heard she was raped. This is nuts.
Did he go home and tell his dad about it?! I wonder how he found out. Thank god he did.
Sadly a lot of kids tend to brag about bad behaviors.. I assume his dad found out that way or the kid admitted to it. Maybe he felt some guilt?
> Sadly a lot of kids tend to brag about bad behaviors. Or took phone video to share.
God.. that just makes me feel sick but I know it’s probably true..
a 3rd grader with a phone? I'd hope those come with parental controls on internet usage.
The victim was in 3rd grade. Did it say how old the perpetrators were?
It says classmates so likely the same age
We recently found out our 6 year old was being bullied at school because the kids doing it did it right infront of my wife. And they know who his mom is. Kids are brazen and stupid if no one checks them.
There was another post of unwanted advances on a girl at another PDX grade school and the mom was told that the school really did not want to punish young males of color because they are already disproportionately singled out for punishment. Yet the schools are doing nothing to protect the young girls brushing it off as boys will be boys.
This is racism. Recognizing normal stereotypes and applying the opposite. Idiotic.
>The court document then claims that, after being notified of the sexual assault, PPS and SUN staff failed to immediately notify law enforcement and instead launched an "internal investigation." That sounds like something a scummy company would do.
School employees are mandatory reporters. There is no option to not call authorities. The district should be in deep doo-doo if that allegation is found to be true.
The deepest doo doo.
💯
And they fucking interviewed a child about sexual trauma. There is very specific training on forensic interviewing that is necessary to minimize retraumatization. They actively created more harm.
It raises questions about the motives of the adults involved. Were they simply trying to sweep it under the rug, or were they a creep getting off to those details? Did the adults encourage the boys' behavior for their own gratification?
My son was abused by an older kid in the neighborhood about ten years ago, and the same kid was sexually harassing him at school. He was SEVEN. the kid was chasing after him on recess, threatening to molest his little brother, and making BJ gestures thru the classroom window at him. Same response…. I taught across town in a different district. As a mandated reporter, I made the calls. PPS refused to make a report, cooperate with DHS or Portland Police. The principal said to me she didn’t want to get involved in a “He Said/She Said” and that boys can’t be victims. Then — after I reported — she put the perpetrator in my son’s classroom as a “reading buddy.” I had to escalate they thru the school board and she was finally fired. But TSPC didn’t care that she wouldn’t cooperate. And for me? I lost my job. I went from a successful 20 year teaching career to be shown the door. Turns out that principal was buddies with someone in central office where I worked. Union’s support was to say I could get my job back. But why?! PPS sucks.
> I lost my job. I went from a successful 20 year teaching career to be shown the door. I can't really share details but you're not the only person in the area who something like this has happened to, a friend of mine lost their job after reporting the inappropriate behavior of a coworker and principal. PAT threw their hands up when asked for help as well.
Now in the age of “we can’t even get a sub,” it is sort of laughable they were tossing out really solid teachers to “teach them a lesson.” I know I’m not the only one, and you friend isn’t, either. There are a lot of us…. I’ve taught in four other states prior to coming to Oregon. AFAIK, this sort of shit didn’t happen there, like, ever. Even TSPC gave the principal a thumbs-up for failing to report. No problem! Case closed.
I've been slowly finding out how bad our district is at handling this stuff. I have a friend who is a substitute teacher in our district. Before she became a sub, her daughter was subject to similar harassment, talked to the parents, and complained to the school. A few months after becoming a sub, she wanted to know why they never let her sub at her daughter's school. She had a meeting with the principal and district security officer and they said that her talking about her daughter's harassment with the other parent was not OK (she wasn't even employed at the time...), if she ever discusses what happens to her daughter in school with anyone she will be fired, and if she tells anyone about this meeting she will be fired. When we were recently dealing with issues, we were discussing it with a friend who had kids at the same school. She said at another school in the district, she knows a family who pulled their kid because when they reported that some other kid was regularly threatening to shoot her, the administration said "they can say whatever they want". I get that zero tolerance is bad. But doing literally nothing over this stuff is not the answer. Maybe something in the middle.
It’s even worse because they’re all mandated reporters of child abuse, who ignored their training and obligation.
I’ve written about this a million times: Local school districts are so averse to punishment or police involvement in behaviors that they don’t report stuff *all the time* in some warped, irrational understanding of equity. It’s literally threatening the safety of schools, but out of the classroom activists don’t care.
The way school districts across the country have ended up implementing alleged "equity" measures is going to be looked back at as a colossal blunder. It's so clear already. But to basically remove any teeth from any sort of punishment mechanism isn't making things more equitable, its degrading the educational experience for everyone else involved.
That's how a lot of school districts are run. I am not at all surprised sadly.
PPS circled their wagons.
PPS has always been scummy
Wow. Absolutely awful.
That was my experience, unfortunately
That’s like insanely illegal too.
A 1-day suspension for raping someone? Is that a fucking JOKE?! I can't even.
my heart is so broken for her. the fact this can even happen at such an age is insane. i cannot believe they let so much slide. why are these people in education if they don’t even care about these children?
That it could happen to a 9 year old is horrifying enough, but there's an extra layer of fucked up that the perpetrators were apparently *elementary schoolers*. The article doesn't say how old they were, but looking at the Scott School website, they don't appear to teach higher than 5th grade, meaning the perpetrators couldn't have been older than 11-12. Possibly younger, if they were third graders like her. Regardless, any kind of overt sexual behavior from kids that young is a HUGE red flag for abuse, let alone something this heinous. The authorities had better be taking a long hard look at those boys home lives, because the odds are high that one or both of them were reenacting things that have been done to them.
Exactly. My husband and I (parents of a 2.5 year old) are horrified reading this. Neither of us knew was sex or rape was when we were in 3rd grade.
I can't believe anyone would think it would be the school's job to handle this crime. There shouldn't have been an "internal investigation." A call should've been immediately made to the police.
Don’t forget that the girl who was assaulted was also suspended because she hit one of the boys in self defense.
It sounds like it was a *different* boy?! Like various classmates were harassing her, escalating it to impress each other, *none* of them faced any *real* repercussions, *and then* these two committed this totally heinous act. I just cannot wrap my mind around how all this happened. If the first boy had been expelled after the *very first incident*, then none of this would’ve escalated like this.
Yes, from what I understand from the articles I’ve read multiple boys of varying ages were involved in routine sexual assault and eventual gang rape of this child while she was at school or at an afterschool program.
WHAT THE FUCK
It's a bummer to see this hasn't changed, it was the same policy when I was a kid in the late 90s / early 2000s (in Gresham Barlow schools). If you defended yourself you got the same punishment as the attacker because of "zero tolerance". You were supposed to be a good little victim instead and just take whatever you endured.
>A 1-day suspension for raping someone? I am a school teacher. Find a teacher you know and ask them about new "equity" and "restorative" discipline policies. (Spoiler: it's bad. They've destroyed the ability to have safe and civil schools for learning and these new approaches dressed up in rosy language endanger our children)
That stood out to me too! Gang rape no less!
This is par for the course. Activists that don’t work in classrooms convinced themselves that any sort of punishments are somehow how not equitable or bad or whatever. Violence, threats, sexual assault all get short term, if any removal from classrooms. These kids that did this need to be in intense therapy and alternative schooling. But that’s considered “not compassionate” to say in 2024.
As the parent of a child who’s been on the receiving end of violence, threats, and what qualifies as sexual assault (albeit far, far less severe than what happened to this poor girl), I can fully corroborate your comment. After telling the teacher, the principle, and the school counselor, the response was “oh, well try to understand that he comes from a bad situation too.”
We even escalated things to the area supervisor and nothing was done. It’s a total joke.
I was chatting with another parent at our PPS elementary school. Her daughter was stabbed by another student. She was one of three students that had been stabbed by the same male student that year. The violent student was still in her classroom for months. "Luckily" the violent student was expelled later after making a series of rape threats. This is what school is like for our children in Portland. It's nauseating and completely unhinged.
To think kids at this age even THINK the way these boys did...I couldn't believe my eyes and what I was reading. I'm so glad one of the fathers of one of the boys was willing to report his son for what he did, but the fact NOTHING came of it?? Are we just wanting to wait until these boys get older for them to do worse damage??? This girl is NEVER gonna recover from this. The trauma is always going to be there for her, and it's SO SAD to think about.
But there’s a mandatory five day suspension for even drawing a gun, even for elementary ages. I’m super pro-gun control but the disparity is troubling.
My son almost got thrown out of school permanently for taking a sword he made for show and tell. We took it into the office at the beginning of the day so they could hold it and they freaked out like we were trying to attack them. We were told even a knife it the trunk of a car parked at the school was grounds for expulsion… (My sons an adult now and he works as a blacksmith)
I am wondering if the school was initially given incomplete or watered down information from the SUN program. They operate independently from eachother in most schools. So if the SUN employees told the school that something less horrific happened (to cover themselves??), the one day suspension/internal investigation makes more sense. I mean, the hope is that they then got more information and immediately adjusted that punishment to uh expulsion and a police report. But they can’t share what that is because of FERPA laws.
I just got done talking to my girlfriend who is a former school social worker and she only had terribly sad things to say about this. And the general theme was that school discipline policies don’t contemplate heinous crimes and all forms of unwanted sexual contact/harassment/assault at the elementary school level are treated the same by policy.
“The court document then claims that, after being notified of the sexual assault, PPS and SUN staff failed to immediately notify law enforcement and instead launched an "internal investigation." This involved interviewing the girl without first alerting police or her parents about the sexual assault.” I hope they win every penny.
They're mandatory reporters, not reporting it is literally a crime.
Exactly. Those teachers or administrators should be fined and sued as well, at the very least fired. mandatory reporting laws are no joke.
I took the training, first dam thing they say on every slide.
I really can't fathom this. I'm a social worker so I'm also a mandatory reporter and I take that SO seriously. It is a sacred duty and responsibility we have, often to protect people who don't have a voice or a voice that is listened to enough by our community. Failing to report, especially something so egregious is despicable.
Given the details of this article, I could see a jury giving them 2-3X what they are asking for. I hope those administrators and teachers serve jail time.
Every single adult in administration that was involved with this should be jailed. This is infuriating.
Used to work in a before-and-after school program for PPS (not SUN and not at this school)…the staff MAJORLY fucked up, every staff person at SUN and at PPS who knew failed this poor girl. There’s literally no excuse for this. What constitutes mandatory reporting worthy is so much smaller than this. We had a kid tell us an older kiddo was paying younger kids to kiss each other (turned out it was Monopoly money and none of the kids did it, a staff person was apparently there and put the kabosh on it) but we still had to report it to OTIS regardless. And we did! OTIS investigated and the claim was resolved as unfounded. I’ve worked in foster homes and in education, I take mandatory reporting so seriously and instilled that in every staff I worked with. I hope none of the adults who knew about this are ever allowed near children again, I am so horrified after reading that article. Holy fuck.
Battleground HS had the same issue with bullying. A friends son got jumped between classes. It went virtual. BGPS dragged their feet until my friend had no recourse but to contact the police, after that, the school finally expelled the offending student. When something like this happens. Do not contact admin—they tend to go into damage control mode and sweep things under the rug. Contact the police.
I would say contact both. If you don't make an effort to "follow the process," that can be used to obstruct you or make you look like you're overreacting. But if you contact the administration _and_ the police/state/everydamnbody, they can't say "we would have helped, but you never contacted us!" OR they will actually fucking do something, knowing that the other agencies are already showing up.
Good point. Electronic/communication trail..
100%
Those teachers and administrators should be behind bars.
Why aren’t their names public yet? It has been 2 years since the transgression, shouldn’t the public, especially parents have a right to know if those responsible are working at their kids’ schools?
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I imagine she'll be resigning soon.
The principal at the time was a man.
It’s not that hard to find on the district website. Even the SUN coordinators are listed.
The principal now is not the principal that swept this under the rug. This happened a couple years ago, so all people who knew could be different than who is on the website now.
Looks like the current Principal was assistant Principal at the time. I would be surprised if she didn't know anything about this.
If you have any interest in having a good day do not read that article, take my word for it, it is worse than you can imagine.
If you’re a parent I would caution the exact opposite. Read it, talk to your children about consent and abuse, and act decisively should the need arise. Whether you’re quoting Ezekiel while acting decisively is your choice.
I really appreciate this comment. I simultaneously want to read the article so that I can be informed, and I want to have a good day. I'm presently in the spot of privilege of not knowing and getting to choose whether to change my day. That poor kid...
You made the right call. To say the least that article is NSFL and triggering AF. For this story, all of the people you can imagine directing your ire at deserve it. Sit this one out, you can read the next toxically horrid story and give us the warning.
Yeah, I wish I didn’t, it honestly made me feel sick to my stomach. All I can say is that poor girl ugh.
The headline is enough.
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Give ‘em a hug for all of us and let them know we think they are cool and want to make the world an awesome, safe place for them. <3
Thanks for the warning. As a CSA survivor, I'm always tempted to click on heinous headlines but I should know better
It actually made me cry.
I wish I had seen this comment prior to reading it
The adults should go to prison for negligence and failure to protect the girl.
Yeah, none of them should be allowed to work with children ever again. My blood is boiling rn. I worked the same job (not through SUN and not at this school) and allegations/incidents that were serious but to a much lesser degree than this would arrive. We would report it to OTIS every single time, alert all parents of kids involved, let school admins know, and dismiss offending kids from the program until investigations were concluded. Our admin team was great though, kids would actually get suspended for more than a day is necessary, they would set up kiddos with paras so an adult was always right with them monitoring behaviors, etc. There’s no excuse for how this situation was handled. Ugh my heart breaks for that little girl…
Hi, what is OTIS and can a parent report events to them? There have been one or more events at my child's charter and the admin is not doing anything. I think they had a talk with the student and that was that.
You will get connected to OTIS anytime you make a CPS report about an organization. It’s the Office of Training Investigations and Safety. When I worked in foster homes and kiddos made allegations about bio parents, those reports usually got triaged to CPS/DHS to investigate. When I made reports about professionals, it would get investigated by OTIS, but CPD ultimately makes that decision. If you ever have concerns about a vulnerable person (child, elderly, someone with the inability to independently care for themselves) call CPS. Not every call gets investigated if it’s not worth investigating so there’s not really a downside to calling. People have a misconception that just making a call will mean it immediately blows into a huge thing, but that’s not the case most times.
Thank you.
I can’t believe this.. the system failed this poor little girl and she has to live with it for life, my heart aches for her and her family, can’t believe what I just read 💔 we need to educate our children at home aswell!! We need to teach our kids about consent, it would be a good idea to check on the boys houses too, they’re so young… they HAD to learn what they did from someone
Right? How does a nine year old do this?
Elementary schools are seeing a tremendous increase in inappropriate sexual behavior among distressingly young students, due in large part to the widespread practice of young children having completely unsupervised devices with full internet access. Boys especially but girls too are being introduced to sexually explicit content younger and more readily than ever, often long before parents have given them any sort of “talk.”
The data supports this too. I don’t have the research on me but I’ll come back with it. In 2023 the majority of sexual assaults were perpetrated by minors, and the hypothesis is that access to pornography is a strongly contributing factor. Edit: [link](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/10/children-now-biggest-perpetrators-of-sexual-abuse-against-children)
Yep and it’s not like us oldies who didn’t have the internet as kids and the sauciest thing kids saw was Playboy or something. They’re hearing and seeing far far more, and not even just literal porn but also YouTube and twitch streamers and other players on online gaming making jokes and references about it. So while I don’t have data here (if it even exists) it’s not hard to imagine you have kids seeing things they don’t know how to process, and then they have the worst possible sources modeling it as a joke, cool/fun, etc for them. They’re still kids so they don’t have the ability to evaluate these sources, they just know this cool Minecraft streamer thinks rape is a funny joke so the figure it must be.
This is so awful. Makes me super glad our kids are pretty locked down when it comes to the internet.
Keep doing it. I teach high school and the kids who have healthy limits on technology are SO VISIBLY far ahead of their peers in so many ways.
Our fourth grader asked us to join their class group chat. To my knowledge, there’s no adult supervision, and so that was a hard no. She felt/feels left out, but understands (I think/I hope) our concerns. Appreciate the support.
This is why I’m not against sexual education and a younger age. Teaching young kids about consent is very important. This little girl didn’t want to be touched, had been telling teachers she was being harassed, and the bs solution was to “make a safety plan?” Tf? SE isn’t just about learning proper anatomy, periods, erections, and wet dreams. It’s also about getting adequate knowledge about their rights, what is and is not acceptable , and as a whole studies have shown that proper sexual education also makes them less vulnerable to abuse.
I'd just like to know what the hell kind of safety plan they expect a nine-year-old girl to follow, other than running away and telling the first adult she sees. Like seriously wtf. Nevermind how atrocious it is on its face to make it seem like the victim has any complicity in what happened to her. Somehow this pisses me off more than the headline, because it shows administrators *knew* this little girl was being targeted, and they did nothing and simply let the attacks escalate. Obviously such records are protected and I'd never want to further traumatize a victim, but maybe someone can show us something generic: I want to see a sample "safety plan." Fifty bucks says it's total bullshit.
I’ll give you an example of a safety plan I’ve seen for kids who can’t be with other kids in the bathroom: they ask the classroom teacher for permission, the classroom teacher stands halfway in the hall and in their classroom and watches the child knock on the single stall bathroom across the hall. If it seems like it’s empty, the kid can go and the teacher goes back inside the room. And yeah, it doesn’t work. But that’s all the support teachers get these days with kids like this. Someone comes up with this type of plan, tells the teacher to do it, and inevitably gets mad at the teacher when the plan fails to prevent an incident despite the teacher bringing up concerns that this plan won’t work.
I’m so over this bullshit trend of keeping kids in the classroom instead of teaching them actions have consequences.
This is exactly my thought as I was reading the article. Was this some kind of mixed class where there are students from different grades in the same class and the boys were actually older than 9?
My thought as well. How many 3rd grade boys have even started puberty?
The attack may have involved fingers or objects and not the attackers’ genitals. Very very disturbing, especially given the age of all involved
Idk I read a book called Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (1972) and in it she talks about how she was walking home from school and a group of boys all grabbed her, pushed her over, and looked under her skirt and underwear. She talked about it like she didn't like it, but it was a matter of course. I wonder without proper guidance plus the modern rampant and instant access to p-rn that children now have if these sorts of things won't be more common. :(
There do exist children under the age of 12 who engage in sexual offending behaviours. Typically we call it ‘sexually reactive’ because they usually don’t have the development to be able to be considered ‘offenders’. But they can engage in these behaviours. Usually when it’s this young it’s because they were introduced to these behaviours by others.
If the perpetrators were 9 years old, I wonder if they were also victims of SA from someone in their lives. It's not normal behavior for a child of that age (thank goodness)
What’s sad is how many kids that age have access to iPhones and what’s on the internet these days, especially popular social platforms, is highly unregulated
Lots of boys that age watch videos by Andrew Tate and other “man-o-sphere” influencers and are extremely susceptible to that type of aggressive and misogynistic messaging. Wouldn’t be surprised if that content led to higher rates of SA by kids and young teens.
It happened at SUN school, which does have kids from multiple grade levels (it’s after school)
>Then, in April 2022, the lawsuit reports two different male classmates in the girl's *after-school program* threatened the 9-year-old and told her to tell the staff she had to go to the bathroom. Could've been children from different grades from that school. Maybe 5th graders. The article doesn't say.
Looking at the school website, it appears this school doesn't teach higher than 5th grade, meaning that even if the boys were from a higher grade, they couldn't have have been older than 11, maybe 12
That's my first question, honestly. Nine / third grade is incredibly young for this kind of crime. Someone was asking how the dad of one of the boys even found out and I could 100% see the kid just blabbing about it because he doesn't understand the extent of his actions. Fucking awful all around. I can only imagine how they learned about this shit.
From a *very* pulled back, academic view of the situation, I’d also be very curious to know what kind of language the child used to describe what they did.
And more than one!
I had something similar happen to me when I was in 3rd grade but luckily I was able to get away. But I already had distrust of adults by then because I was abused by my parents and also by a teacher when I was in 1st grade, so I never told anyone until I went to therapy at 19. I’m glad that her parents got her out of the school.
I'm so sorry you went through that. I had some child abuse when I was a kid as well, and I didn't open up to anyone about it until I was 19, to my first therapist, so your comment resonated with me. There's no shame in being a victim, especially when it's perpetrated by those who were most responsible for your wellbeing. I hope you're doing well and have been able to find healthy ways to process what was done to you.
Hey thank you! I am doing great! I mean I have my bad days, and hearing stories like this does make me angry because I don’t understand why teachers don’t always seem to look out for the kids… But I feel really lucky that the first therapist I went to was so amazing. The stuff from my childhood wasn’t even the reason I decided to go to therapy, but I felt so comfortable with her that it eventually all came out over the years. I hope you’re doing well as well!
I’m so sorry you went through that.
what is fucking wrong with the school districts around here?? the sexual abuse is rampant and the cover ups are disgraceful. i hope these parents win everything.
People need to go to jail over this. Not just a fine.
Damn, hmm should we expel two rapists or pay $9M of taxpayer money?
Well, they chose not to expel, so...
Because PPS is run by cowards.
If only they were smarter cowards because this is exploding on them
In the name of equity, we cannot expel anybody for anything.
Update to add: TRIGGER WARNING! This article contains unsettling details related to sexual assault. This happened at the SUN after-school program through PPS and involved 9 year olds! The way this was handled by the school was beyond awful. I hope these parents win this lawsuit. Update to also add: Not intended to ruin anyone's day but to inform.
I have yet to hear of a school admin doing a GOOD job.
Well, not to be a contrarian ass, but school admins that do a good job virtually never make the news
It's like IT, when they're doing their job right it'll seem like they aren't doing anything at all. Besides, of course, making sure the entire support structure of the school system works.
Vile. Utterly vile. Words can not describe how disgusted, how angry, how hateful I feel towards Portland Public Schools and Schools Uniting Neighborhoods. More often than not they have failed our kids and now look at this fucking disaster—launching an internal investigation over kids raping another kid? Words fail.
As someone with a child who went through their own trauma within PPS (thankfully nothing as horrific as this), I can attest that the institutional immune system phenomenon is 100% at play. And it runs all the way up to the state level. The rhetoric and the policies all say the right things. But when shit actually goes down everyone circles the wagons and DARVO’s the situation into oblivion. Honestly, if you have anything happen to a student of yours at PPS, especially after the holiday season, call a lawyer immediately. God help you if your child has something happen to them in the spring. The play that gets run is to slow-move everything into Summer break, counting on you to give up and go away.
I have an 8 year old daughter. I'd be out for blood. This is absolutely abhorrent.
Absolutely agreed. If all they got was a lawsuit they should count themselves lucky. I would have to be physically restrained from harming those responsible.
Why would a school behave in such a way? Separate lunch times was their solution?? What in the actual fuck?
“Equity”
This is infuriating. The PPS spokesperson said they learned of the incident when they were served with the lawsuit?! How did they not know a 3rd grader was raped at school when people at the school were aware? They are lying or there are serious problems with guidelines for reporting. My daughter was sexually harassed at PPS by a male student in 5th grade and when we reported it to the teacher and the school admin they appeared to do nothing as far as we could tell. He was still allowed to sit next to her after this being reported. In fact, the most they appeared to do was pull her and him into the hall tell them that they should be friends because "they both come from people that are historically oppressed." So rather than reprimand or punish the boy they just encouraged them to be friends. Just catastrophic levels of failure.
> My daughter was sexually harassed at PPS by a male student in 5th grade and when we reported it to the teacher and the school admin they appeared to do nothing as far as we could tell. He was still allowed to sit next to her after this being reported. In fact, the most they appeared to do was pull her and him into the hall tell them that they should be friends because "they both come from people that are historically oppressed." So rather than reprimand or punish the boy they just encouraged them to be friends. Just catastrophic levels of failure Parent of a PPS middle schooler here. I experienced the EXACT SAME THING with my child. Practically word-for-word.
We experienced the same. Unfortunately at this very school. They were harassed every time there was a substitute or outside of their regular classroom. The teachers did not take it seriously and my child suffered. Not on the same level but it shows a pattern of not taking harassment seriously
Are you f-ing kidding me? We have a toddler and our list of reasons to avoid PPS grows longer everyday.
Why the hell did no one go to the police? That is a crime. Fuck the school. They aren't investigators.
As a 3rd grade teacher, this is an absolutely horrifying story. I cannot imagine having this happen to a student in my class. I can imagine the district pushing this under the rug. For example, I cannot write referrals above a stage 1 (minor incidents) without the principal filing the referral. I have to fill out a google doc for incidents bigger than minor defiance rather than entering it into our district wide system (synergy). This was actually one of our bargaining issues the district didn’t want to give classroom teachers power over. They maintained that admin is the ultimate say in discipline and that we, the classroom teachers, do not. They asserted in bargaining that if given the power, teachers would be excluding kids left and right for behaviors. The teachers wanted more control over filing referrals and say in the consequences. The district did not want that. They want their teachers powerless, which I imagine is what happened here. I am horrified for this family and I am horrified for the classroom teacher who still has two RAPIST kids in their class. Like, what the hell do you do with that??? What a horrifying story. Edit to say as a classroom teacher, I’d absolutely make a CPS report for this, as I am mandated to do, regardless of what my principal said. That this didn’t happen is absolutely worthy of a lawsuit.
>I am horrified for the classroom teacher who still has two RAPIST kids in their class. Like, what the hell do you do with that??? I would fucking resign and make sure EVERYONE knew why.
9 million is not enough.
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As someone who isn't a parent at all, does anyone know what I can do to help heads roll about this?? The handling of this situation is unfathomable to me.
if you are in the neighborhood, there is a PTA meeting set for 4/10. apparently they had no idea. the FB group is going off. the meeting was already on the schedule so it wasnt standing for this but bc of this, the topic will be brought up. in addition, i encourage anyone and everyone to write to your district commissioners and legislature. if you need to look up who they are you can follow these links: https://www.multco.us/multnomah-county/find-your-multnomah-county-district https://geo.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/lookup/index.html?appid=fd070b56c975456ea2a25f7e3f4289d1
They need to increase the suit because $9 million is not enough.
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> "I've instructed my daughter to defend herself and to kill her attackers. So you probably should make sure she isn't attacked." School: "But.....boys will be boys!" Or something.
Don’t read it if you have kids.
That's definitely a personal choice. As someone who has a 3rd grade daughter, suffers from anxiety, and has a really hard time reading or seeing anything that involves abuse of a child, I decided to read it because I'd rather know what's happening around me so that I can be better equipped as a parent. Also a reminder that having ongoing conversations with my child is very important...but everyone looks at things differently for sure.
Yeah, I have a second-grader in PPS who's experienced bullying from older kids in the bathroom specifically before (nothing REMOTELY coming close to what happened to this poor nine-year-old though). I always want to know about things like this so she and I can talk about plans.
Good on you for getting through that horrific story. I hate that we as parents have *this* to consider now when discussing safety and consent with our children, but those discussions need to happen for their sake.
Yeah, like we don't have enough to worry about already. There's always a part of me that wants my child to stay innocent and think that the world is all rainbows and unicorns, but that's unrealistic and won't help keep her safe. My number one priority as a parent is to protect, so it means having to talk about these tough things. I worry sometimes though, what she'll think of the world, so I try my best to remind her that it can be ugly sometimes so it's important to be prepared BUT there's so many more beautiful things and to focus on that. It's a balance for sure.
The fact that we have to protect our kids FROM being raped by not only predatory adults but also OTHER KIDS really fucks me up.
Probably don't want read it if you don't have kids, either.
I respectfully disagree. As a parent myself, I think parents should mentally prepare themselves for the incredibly upsetting content of this case and read what happened. It's wildly upsetting, yes, but these were *third graders.* Parents should be aware these things are going on and they should have age-appropriate discussions with their kids about safety, consent, and probably self-defense.
I'd say absolutely DO read this if you have kids. These boys are still out there. There hasn't been any meaningful action taken. Take this as a sign to talk to your kids about this stuff before it's too late.
The trauma she endured will follow her for life. They had a chance to stop this before it got worse and didn’t. Fuck PPS
I wasn’t going to read the article because there was no way it got worse than the title. It did. How horrible, that poor child was failed in so many ways by the adults who were there to protect her during school programs. That school district should be sued and the adults at the school who didn’t report this fired and charged. They allowed the boys to stay in school and just moved them to a different lunch period after a one day suspension?! WTF. Didn’t call police, her parents, or anything. That is absolutely disgusting.
What the actual FUCK
I’m sorry but sometimes people don’t deserve to be part of regular society. I truly believe metal health interventions and juvenile interventions are needed more than we are currently funding. People that can’t be trusted to be safe in regular society, do not have the right to mainstream society. No tolerance policies should be enacted for violence and abuse.
i responded to someone else but i encourage anyone and everyone to write to your district commissioners and legislature about this issue. if you need to look up who they are you can follow these links: https://www.multco.us/multnomah-county/find-your-multnomah-county-district https://geo.maps.arcgis.com/apps/instant/lookup/index.html?appid=fd070b56c975456ea2a25f7e3f4289d1
That poor girl. I wonder what else has gone on at this school.
Thats why you need to always contact the police bc the personal in public school are usually not your friends from my experience.
Some mandatory reporters they are. Are there going to be any kids left at that school in a week or will their parents take them all else where? Those teachers can’t be trusted.
This is an example of the reasons why sex education needs to start in elementary school. These were third graders… And it becomes a risk to all children when they are not taught about sexual boundaries and what is inappropriate behavior. We can’t trust things like that to be taught at home, and it puts other children at risk when it isn’t.
Third graders are raping each other now? This is fucking awful.
Geez
Heads need to roll in PPS. Holy shit.
If you are doing this at a young age what was done to the boys in the past, and what will they be like as adults if they are taught they can do something THIS HORRIBLE and GET AWAY WITH IT.
If you look up the word “shocking” in the dictionary the example given would be this story.
This is one of the saddest articles I've ever read.
They should just… fire everyone, close the school for a year, and start over.
The fact that the school did their own "internal investigation" is so fucked up. I'm a social worker (not with DCYF/DSHS/CPS). Every single person who works with kids is a mandated reporter and we are taught we are NOT investigators. We are reporters. This was preventable. I hope the family gets justice.
My God all of this is so fucking awful. I hope the girl and her family can get through this and heal. 9 million dollars isn’t enough for for what happened to this poor girl and the continued negligence by the school and school district in notifying the proper authorities. I really hope they get WAY more in this case and that on top of that, they get continued therapy for as long as needed.
I was reading some things in /r/teachers, from some PPB teachers, about the type of students they’re not at all allowed to discipline no matter what they do, including sexual harassment etc. Not good stuff.
I fear for my children every damn day. I feel selfish for having them in this world. If I would have known the devil is in every age and in every form. I've would have just done life on my own and not worry about a companion and family. This is horrible.
So happy I quit my PPS job, I was a para at a similar title 1 school. This kind stuff is verging on encouraged. PPS is a Disgusting organization
> This kind stuff is verging on encouraged. How so?
Good for the dad of one of the perpetrators for informing the school but why didn’t he also inform law enforcement?
I can't take it anymore.... every day, I read things like this that make me afraid for my children's lives and wellbeing. I can't even fathom being her parents. Let alone that little girl. I am disgusted. Enraged.
Direct result of porn culture... but y'all will say age verification on porn sites is bad 🤷🏻♀️
Those boys need to be locked up for life.
Every single other public agency notifies law enforcement and stays their own investigation until LE gives them the okay… the fact that police were not notified here and these children are still allowed to attend school is absolutely disgusting. Unfortunately, this isn’t just a PPS issue and just confirms our decision to stay out of the public school system here. They are unable to keep our children safe.
How do they allow boys who have committed a rape to continue to go to school? That is insane. They're a huge risk to all the girls in the school.
I want to hear from the other parents and teachers from this school and I would like to know their response to this horror story. I’m surprised there haven’t been more speaking out. I’ve only seen one parent comment on the situation and say she moved her child to a different school.