MI: Appeals court sends student harassment case back for trial

Note: The abuses this child suffered at the hands of staff and peers alike is truly nauseating

Posted on: January 8, 2009 9:16 AM, by Ed Brayton
http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/01/appeals_court_sends_student_ha.php

A 6th Circuit Court of Appeals panel has ruled in favor of a student who claims that officials at Hudson middle school in Southeast Michigan were deliberately indifferent and failed to take any action to stop systemic harassment from other students - and even from at least one teacher.

The appeals court ruling does not settle the case, it merely remands it back to the district court for a full trial. The district court had granted summary judgment to the school, avoiding a full trial. The student's attorneys appealed, arguing that the district court had erred in concluding that the school was not intentionally ignoring the harassment problem; the appeals court agreed and has ordered the district court to hold a full trial on the matter.

The facts in the case, as stated in the appeals court ruling, are quite disturbing. The student, who is referred to in the ruling only by his initials, DP, was apparently the victim of constant harassment from his classmates beginning in the sixth grade, including frequent taunts of "queer" and "faggot" aimed at him. And in at least one incident cited by the court, a teacher joined in on the abuse:

On one occasion, DP attempted to stop a female classmate, BC, from tormenting another student. In response, BC slapped DP. Though, upon learning about the incident, band teacher Crystal Bough, told DP she "w[ould] take care of it," the Pattersons were never contacted by the school, nor did Ms. Bough report the incident to the principal. The Pattersons learned from DP that he had been assaulted at school. This incident led to further teasing, including teasing from geography teacher John Redding, who asked DP later that same day in front of a full class of students: "[H]ow does it feel to be hit by a girl[?]" The class laughed at DP.

The harassment from his fellow students came in many forms, most of them anti-gay slurs and references to "Mr. Clean," apparently referring to the student's lack of pubic hair. The bullying was not merely verbal, however:

In March 2005, unknown students broke into DP's gym locker, removed his clothes and urinated on them, and threw his tennis shoes in the toilet. The locker was also "covered with shaving cream spelling out sexually oriented words." Later that spring, two students, KM and JL, hung a "Mr. Clean" poster on DP's locker in the main hallway...

At some point after the "Mr. Clean" incident, DP's locker in the main hallway was vandalized by unknown students. These students used permanent markers and wrote words such as "gay," "faggot," and "queer" up and down the locker. Additionally, a picture of a penis being inserted into a rectum was drawn on the locker. The inside of the locker was also defaced with various derogatory phrases, such as "suck your mother's tits" and "you suck dicks."

And it even went so far as actual sexual assault:

The final incident of harassment occurred in late May 2005. After Friday night junior-varsity baseball practice, DP was sexually assaulted by a fellow teammate, LP, in the locker room. LP stripped naked, forced DP into a corner, jumped on DP's shoulders, and rubbed his penis and scrotum on DP's neck and face. While the assault was occurring, another student, NH, blocked the exit so DP could not escape.

While the student was expelled for this and brought up on charges for the assault, the ruling reports that the baseball coach held a team meeting with DP present at which he told the students that they should "not joke around with guys who can't take a man joke."

The victim is so scarred by all of this that he can no longer set foot inside the school without panic attacks. The case will now go back to the district court for a full trial on whether the school "failed to implement and enforce meaningful procedures to ensure compliance with federal law and the policies of [Hudson] and failed to ensure the proper education and training of staff as to harassment issues."

Terry Heiss, an Ada attorney who represented the plaintiffs in the case, told me that the family is grateful for the opportunity to have their day in court: "I believe the 6th circuit court of appeals effectively and carefully reviewed the record and did a good analysis of the interplay between the summary judgment rules and the Supreme Court cases in this area. My clients are pleased with that analysis."

When asked if he was concerned that the case would be heard by the same judge that initially rejected their case, Heiss noted that the trial will be in front of a jury and that he has confidence in the judge's impartiality, saying, "I think Judge Zatkoff will give us a very fair trial. I don't think the fact that his initial decision was reversed will affect his judgment at all."

Glenn Stutzky, an associate professor of social work at MSU, was an expert in this case. He could not speak with me about the specifics of the case but he did tell us that bullying is a very serious
problem in schools with extremely pernicious effects:

The important thing to understand about bullying is that it's a form of abuse. And until we grasp that, we're not going to be able to deal with it effectively. Bullying in schools is the same dynamic that occurs in domestic violence in the home, it's exactly the same set of circumstances and interactions between two people in which violence and abuse are used to dominate and control another individual. The AMA has concluded that bullying impact kids as much as child abuse, drug addiction and early sexual encounters. The impacts include increased absences, physical and medical problems from the stress and anxiety, eating and sleeping problems, academic problems. These are all now well documented in research. But it can affect the entire school because students pushed to extremes by such bullying may take their own life or may take the lives of their tormenters, as happened in the Columbine incident.

Stutzky noted that this ruling comes close on the heels of the failure of a bill in the Michigan legislature, Matt's Safe School Law, that would have required schools to have programs to deal with bullying:

Bullying that is not dealt with comprehensively and systemically will always increase rather than staying at the level it's at. The state legislature had an opportunity to deal with this on a statewide basis and failed. The reality is that a lot of schools do not have any kind of specific policy dealing with bullying. And like with any other type of serious situation, we need good legislation to provide greater safety and a means for dealing with it when it does happen. We need this legislation passed so that the state stands up and recognizes that this is a serious problem and we need to address this.

That bill was named for Matt Epling, a young man from East Lansing who took his own life in 2002 after serious hazing from classmates. As the Lansing State Journal reported on Sunday, the bill had broad bipartisan support but was prevented from getting a vote in the state Senate by Majority Leader Alan Cropsey (R-Dewitt).