Madison County school board
The Madison County school board and Superintendent David Copeland meet at the central office Thursday evening. (Crystal Bonvillian/cbonvillian@al.com)
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama -- The Madison County school board was quiet Thursday night regarding a rape case out of Sparkman Middle School that has the U.S. Department of Justice speaking out in support of the victim.
The board went into executive session shortly after 6 p.m. to discuss the pending lawsuit in the case. They remained there until about 7:45 p.m., at which point the meeting was adjourned.
Board members declined to comment on the case as they left the central office.
The school district issued a brief statement Thursday afternoon in support of Sparkman Middle principal Ronnie Blair, assistant principal Teresa Terrell and former assistant principal Jeanne Dunaway, who is now principal of Madison County Elementary.
"The attorneys for the Board of Education and school officials are confident that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals will rule in favor of the board and the administrators. Our attorneys recommend that we not discuss ongoing litigation," the statement read.
Matt Massey, who beat Blair in a runoff election earlier this summer to become the next Madison County superintendent, said Thursday that he is "very, very concerned" about the incident, particularly about the victim and her family. In his current position as a math teacher at Buckhorn High School, however, he has no further access to information about the case than what has been publicly reported.
"When I become superintendent, I will have access to a lot more information and will be able to really delve into it," Massey told AL.com.
The Justice Department on Wednesday filed a brief in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals castigating officials at Sparkman Middle for their response in January 2010 to the then-14-year-old special needs student's complaint that she was being sexually harassed by an older male student.
Teacher's aide June Simpson talked the girl into going into a boys' bathroom with the 16-year-old suspect -- under the ruse of agreeing to sex -- so administrators could "catch him in the act." When no adults immediately followed the teens into the bathroom, the girl was sodomized.
Simpson, who has since resigned from the district, testified that she told Dunaway, then her immediate supervisor, of the plan beforehand, but that Dunaway did nothing to stop it from happening. According to court records, Blair and Terrell were also aware beforehand of the boy's history of violence and sexual misconduct on campus.
The subsequent lawsuit filed by the girl's father was mostly thrown out by a federal district judge, but the case is being appealed by both sides. The federal claims made in the lawsuit were dismissed, but the judge allowed state claims for negligence and wantonness to move forward.
It is in the appeal process that the Justice Department has offered support. The National Women's Law Center also on Wednesday filed a brief supporting the victim, who left the school district after the rape and now lives in another state. In a press release issued Thursday, the law center cited the "outrageous response" by the school board and Sparkman officials.