Two mothers who claimed their sons were sexually bullied have won a lawsuit against the Wayne County, Tennessee schools and have been awarded $100,000 each.
The women said the boys were humiliated in a locker room at Waynesboro Middle School when they joined the boys’ basketball team in 2008. The youths were seventh-graders at the time and claimed they were hazed by boys in the eighth grade.
A U.S. District Court jury in Columbia deliberated for about an hour and then awarded the families $100,000 each, The Tennessean newspaper reported. The Associated Press does not identify alleged victims of sexual assault and is not naming the boys or their families to protect their identities.
One boy said he was held down by three students while another sodomized him with a felt-tip marker. The other said he was tricked into doing a blindfolded sit-up while one of the students stood above his face with his pants down.
Defense lawyer Eddie Schmidt said the decision should be a warning that schools must stop bullying.
“I think the practical impact is that schools and school officials are going to have to take bullying seriously and take proactive steps to prevent bullying, identify behavior that is bullying, watch the hot spots where bullying occurs, and when it does occur, take quick, effective remedial actions,” he said.
School system attorney John Schwalb asserted in his closing argument that school officials listened to the complaints and punished the boys responsible. Four eighth-graders on the team were sent to an alternative school for 11 days, removed from the basketball team and placed on probation after the incident came to light.
However, the Wayne County Board of Education later reinstated the boys to the basketball team. Juvenile convictions against the four eighth-graders were tossed out after they appealed. The middle school basketball coach was charged with failure to report a sexual assault against a child, but the charge was dismissed.
Maury Nation, an associated professor of human and organizational development at Vanderbilt University who studies bullying, said the pattern of abuse described in the lawsuit is serious enough to create an increased risk of mental health problems in the victims later in life.
Nation said the lawsuit suggests that Wayne County failed to take a more proactive stance against bullying.
“You’re much more likely to get bullying behavior reported in schools that have adults who write off or don’t actually discourage behavior. Students are very adept at picking up on the attitudes of adults in the building,” Nation said.
Schwalb said after the trial that it is too early to say whether the school system will appeal.
Topics Tennessee
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