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Imagine you are a victim of a horrible crime. Your attackers pin you back and tell you if you make a sound, they will hurt you or possibly kill you. They have their way and move on, that is if they don't kill you.
This scenario is all too common in sexual assault cases. In fact, studies have shown that very few sexual assaults involve the actual use of a weapon, as the threat of harm is enough to silence most victims into submission.
A middle school student who was charged with public lewdness in a story that is disturbing fell right in line with those statistics. The charge was based on the fact that her supposed attackers threatened to hurt her if she screamed for help.
The sexual assault occurred in a Beaumont, Texas classroom when two boys supposedly pinned the young girl back in her chair, two other boys blocked the view of the substitute teacher and another boy grabbed the young girl's breasts and then stuck his hand down her pants and touched her vagina.
As any reputable anti-violence program teaches, "No means No", and this young girl claims she said
NO loud and clear.
“I was telling them to stop and leave me alone and the teacher looked back there like three times and he didn’t say nothing.”
The girl told her best friend, whose mother told her that she needed to report it. When she did, however, it all hit this young victim like some horrible slap in the face.
“They (school officials) said that (I consented) because the teacher didn’t know nothing about it and that I was not screaming and fighting. He (the boy who touched her) said that if I said something, he was going to hit me in my face and break my jaw and they would get their girlfriends to jump me.
“I never even kissed a boy before.”
According to a Beaumont police officer and expert in the field of child sexual assaults, Bill Davis expressed his extreme concern over the school's dismissal of the girl's claims because she didn't scream or fight.
“There are two types of resistance to assault — one is active and one is passive,” Davis said. “And many times in passive resistance the victims don’t cry out vocally but remember the details and they can tell the authorities the facts of the incident. I have investigated numerous cases where, for whatever the reason, the victims didn’t make a loud outcry or scream when they were the victims of an attack but that does not mean the incident did not happen.”
Although the substitute was disciplined for a lack of
noticing what was going on, privacy matters inhibit details of that discipline being revealed and according to Assistant Superintendent, David Harris, semantics is everything is this case.
“Has someone said there was a sexually assault,” Harris asked. “Has someone said to you that it was sexual assault? Who has said that? Has an agency said that is what took place? Has anyone said that it was a sexual assault? Has anyone in law enforcement said that, based on what the evidence is, or whatever?”
According to Texas Penal Code Sect. 22.011 (a) “A person commits an offense of sexual assault if the person intentionally or knowingly: (A) causes the penetration of the anus or female sexual organ of another person by any means, without that person’s consent.”
The act is considered aggravated sexual assault if it involved a child and the definition of a child under Texas law, according to the Texas Penal Code is, “a person who is younger than 17 years of age and who is not the spouse of the actor.”
After the legal wording of sexual assault was provided to Harris he replied, “I would assume that if it is going to the DA’s office that they are going to look into it and determine if it is a sexual assault. I guess somebody at some point is going to have to say it was a sexual assault.”
Since the young girl was not of consenting age and her claims of being restrained and violated in a sexual manner were so carelessly thrown out by police officers because the substitute teacher did not witness or hear her screams of distress, one would think that some kind of adherence to an honorary "code" of police ethics was being followed.
Even the Beaumont Certified Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner was taken aback by the way the case was handled, although she did say
since BISD created and put into operation its own police force she has not examined a single student referred by the district.
A frightening statement in and of itself.
The case is now at the District Attorney's office and they will launch their own, hopefully unbiased, investigation into this young girl's claims.
As an advocate of dating violence, the silence of victims is the most horrible scream of all. The father's testament of this young girls model behavior in school as well as her grades and discipline history can help set the image of type of child she is. However, no student, good or bad, ever deserves to be violated.
Disbelief.
