Charges of Sex Harassment Rock Schools

LAKE FOREST, Calif. —  The taunting began after a birthday party last January, when the 10-year-old girl got her head stuck inside a dollhouse while playing with friends.

At school, the girl said, a classmate fabricated a tale that she had been simulating a sexual act with a Ken doll. After that, the girl alleged, she was subjected to “sexually lewd comments and gestures, vulgarity and insults . . . in class, in the hallways, at lunch and on the playground.”

Ordinarily, this story of a schoolgirl’s torment would have ended at the principal’s office. In this case, however, it was typed out as a legal complaint and filed this month in Orange County Superior Court.

The lawsuit against a boy, his family, a Lake Forest elementary school principal and Saddleback Valley Unified School District comes as allegations of “peer sexual harassment” are gaining wider public attention.

A year ago, Petaluma’s school system settled a junior high school student’s sexual harassment lawsuit for $250,000--without admitting wrongdoing--after the girl alleged that she had suffered lewd taunts about hot dogs and other abuse and was forced to leave town. Another Northern California district, in Antioch, was found liable in 1996 for $500,000 resulting from a girl’s claim that she endured sexual comments and threats in sixth grade.

On the other hand, a federal jury in New York state recently ruled against a sixth-grade girl who said that boys had called her names and that she and other girls had been physically abused.

And a suit filed in November 1995 against Capistrano Unified School District, in which a 13-year-old girl alleged that 11 other girls sexually harassed and assaulted her, was settled without trial in February. A district lawyer said school officials were “happy” with the undisclosed terms.

Though there are no statistics on the number of peer harassment lawsuits, Merrick Rossein, a City University law professor who represented the New York girl, said the number of such cases is increasing “exponentially.” Those who defend schools say that may be an exaggeration but concede that the fear of lawsuits is widespread.

Few educators these days shrug off incidents with the adage that boys will be boys--or girls will be girls. But get-tough policies can be problematic too.

In September 1996, a North Carolina school district caused a national uproar by suspending a 6-year-old, Johnathan Prevette, for kissing a girl on the cheek.

Heeding calls for help from educators, the federal government published new guidelines in March on how to deal with complaints. The Department of Education said the 25-year-old federal Title IX, which prohibits sex discrimination in schools--and is best known for spurring gender equity in athletic programs--also prohibits sexual harassment.

That opinion has not been definitively affirmed by federal courts. A California state law in force since 1993, however, similarly prohibits sexual harassment of students and allows school districts to expel youngsters as early as fourth grade for that offense.

Many educators contend that a formal legal charge of sexual harassment is often the wrong way to handle incidents that arise when students confront their developing sexuality--and each other--on the playground. Schools, they say, should not always be held to the same standard as the workplace.

“The problem with these suits for damages, if it continues and if it becomes the law of the land, is that you have a potential for liability for acts over which you have no control,” said Gwendolyn Gregory, deputy general counsel for the National School Boards Assn. “That’s the concern. Unlike an employee, there’s only so much punishment that you can mete out for kids.

“It’s not just the schools’ problem. We’re the ones getting sued, but the entire society has to deal with it.”

Yolanda Wu, a staff attorney for the National Organization for Women’s Legal Defense and Education Fund, which represented the Petaluma plaintiff, defended the comparison to sexual harassment rules in the workplace.

“In fact, you could argue that schools have a higher responsibility to do something about harassment between kids,” Wu said. “Kids are more vulnerable than employees are. Also, we’ve been trying to point out to courts that schools are the training ground for the workplace. You teach the boys before they grow up to become men and do the same thing.”

The full story of what happened to the girl at the Lake Forest school could remain unclear as the lawsuit wends through the legal system. Many details would be kept private if the suit is settled with a confidentiality agreement.

The parents of the boy named as a defendant could not be reached. The school’s principal would not comment. A district spokeswoman, Elaine Carter, would not discuss the suit but noted that Saddleback Valley Unified has a long-standing policy against sexual harassment of students. She also said the district reviewed an initial claim describing the girl’s allegations, before the lawsuit was filed, and that it was “appropriately resolved.”

The mother of the girl disagreed, saying her repeated attempts to seek help were fruitless.

“I don’t feel they made any effort. I really don’t. In the five months I kept going back and forth to the principal, it only got worse,” the mother said, adding that the principal suggested that her daughter “was making it up, more or less.”

Invented or not, the girl’s story in the lawsuit contains strong sexual language for a fifth-grade environment.

The complaint alleges that the girl was “subjected to the humiliation of being called ‘molester,’ ‘rapist,’ ‘child rapist’ [and] ‘lesbian,’ and was taunted with accusations of ‘doing sick, nasty things with other girls.’ ”

The suit also alleges that the girl and two friends reported the taunting to the principal soon after it began, but that the principal’s efforts to mediate only triggered more abuse from classmates.

The girl, the suit said, “has been so traumatized by the conduct that she is frequently physically ill [and] does not want to go to school.”

Despite the trauma, her mother said, the girl is prepared to talk to authorities to back up her story. The suit seeks unspecified damages for emotional distress and costs such as medical expenses.

“We didn’t want to even bother with the lawsuit if she did not want to talk,” the mother said. “As scared as she is of speaking in the public, she seems to think if it came to that, she would answer questions as best she could.”