School System Downplayed Alleged Sexual Misconduct Against 12-Year Old, Citing ‘Hard Life Of Suspect, Suit Claims

 A Virginia school district turned a blind eye to horrific sexual abuse in a middle school in 2012, with staff members showing more compassion for an alleged attacker than for the victim, a new court filing alleges.

The allegations have come to light a decade later because the victim waited until she was an adult to sue and the case has been in the courts for the last three years. The explosive claims against Fairfax County Public Schools were revealed in a newly filed amended complaint and paint a disturbing picture of gang activity and sex trafficking in the area.

The events occurred when the girl, identified in court papers as B.R., was a 12-year-old student at Rachel Carson Middle School. One of her alleged attackers was an eighth grader called only C.K. in court papers, while other alleged attackers were unknown men who allegedly gang raped her in a closet in the school after C.K. bragged that he was grooming her for “friends” who would “make a lot of money” off of her, the complaint says.

The complaint says that C.K. waited for B.R. at the bus stop after school, brandished a knife, and “led Plaintiff to a secluded nearby area outside where he wrestled Plaintiff to the ground, held her there against her will, removed her clothing, and forced Plaintiff… to perform oral sex.” Similar events occurred on a near-daily basis for several days, until the girl’s mother heard a voicemail message in which her daughter’s tormentor crudely threatened to sodomize her, according to the complaint.

Although it was before the alleged gang rape and the girl had not yet told her parents the extent of the abuse she had allegedly endured, her parents went to school officials in February of 2011 to complain of persistent sexual harassment in the school halls, the voicemail from C.K., and so claim that C.K. had stolen $50 from B.R. Officials allegedly brushed her complaint aside.

“Assistant Principal S.T. told Plaintiff and her parents that C.K. ‘had a very hard life and been in enough trouble,’ and asked Plaintiff and her mother why they were trying to ‘ruin a young boy’s life,’” the complaint states.

Assistant Principal S.T. then visited C.K.’s home, where his mother told him that he was “borrowing” the $50. After that conversation, the assistant principal told B.R.’s parents that it appeared to be a “boy girl thing” in which B.R. was “sexually active” with C.K. The assistant principal returned the $50 while laughing that B.R. should take it back before she spent it on Christmas shopping herself, the complaint says.

The abuse got worse after she went to school officials, culminating in a student dragging her into a closet in the school building after school where she was “raped by three unknown males (Mike Roes 1 – 3) consistent with the modus operandi of human and sexual traffickers in the Fairfax community,” the lawsuit alleged.

In February 2012, B.K.’s parents began keeping her home from school, and she disclosed the full extent of the alleged sexual abuse. On March 5, her parents went to the police and spoke with Detective Fred Chambers – the former School Resource Officer for the middle school — who directed her to take a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (“SANE”) evaluation which “revealed she suffered contusions inside her anus thereby corroborating her report of rape and sodomy,” the suit says.

Yet the detective went on to accuse the girl of making a false rape accusation “despite his knowledge of corroborating evidence,” the complaint says. School officials began investigating the alleged victim, the complaint claims.

“Under the guise of a school investigation, and in the course and scope of his authority as principal of RCMS, Principal A.F. visited Plaintiff’s elementary school to dig up ‘dirt’ on Plaintiff,” it says.

Although little is known of the assailants alleged to have gang-raped the girl, the events happened at the same time that  NPR was reporting that the gang MS-13 was forcing children into prostitution in Fairfax. In 2014, FCPS warned of sex trafficking in a page on its website that included a video saying one gang alone had attempted to recruit more than 800 girls in the county.

FCPS had a pattern of downplaying sexual misconduct so that the school system’s statistics looked better, the complaint says. “In effect, FCSB had a policy, custom, and practice of sweeping student-on-student sexual violence and sexual harassment under the rug,” it says.

Schools also required to disclose certain incidents in a statewide database. Loudoun County acknowledged failing to report to the database properly after The Daily Wire pointed out that both the infamous bathroom rape and an earlier well-known locker room incident were missing.

In the 2011-2012 school year, when the Rachel Carson complaints were filed, FCPS reported zero sexual assaults and five sexual batteries across its 180,000 students. In the 2018-19 school year, the most recent before coronavirus disruptions, FCPS reported 10 incidents of “sexual battery against student.”