Court rejects suit against school over Mississippi sexual assault

[samanthajane13]

(Reuters) - A federal appeals court threw out a civil rights lawsuit on Friday that accused a public school district of repeatedly allowing a stranger to take a 9-year-old Mississippi girl out of school, after which he sexually abused her.

The New Orleans-based U.S. Court of Appeals ruled in a 16-2 opinion that Mississippi's Covington County School District had no constitutional duty to protect the fourth grader from the man who checked her out of school six times, posing as a parent.

"Schools are simply not constitutionally required to ensure students' safety from private actors," the court said.

Unlike prisons, mental institutions and foster care systems that assume an active role in caring for their charges, schools don't have the same kind of "special relationship" with their students that could give rise to liability under federal law, the court ruled.

The student, who was not named, and her relatives sued the school district and several school officials in 2008. Even though the elementary school had a check-out policy allowing only designated adults to pick children up, Tommy Keyes signed the girl out of school and then "brutally and viciously raped" her before returning her to class, the complaint said.

http://news.yahoo.com/court-rejects-...034907607.html


MUCH more at the link!!

[Amy]

Whoever sits on that appeals court need to put their brains in gear. Schools DO have the legal responsibility of safe guarding the students in their care. Such as, if the POS that signed the girl out was NOT on the list of people allowed to do so, someone sitting @ the receptionists desk (or wherever the sign out is) was negligent in his/her duty. Why have a list if one is not going to refer to it when a child is signed out?

[samanthajane13]

EXACTLY!!!

Our schools have a different way of doing things. They have to check each child's emergency contact sheet to see who they CAN release to. For Katey, it was me, my mom, and my grandfather.

If anyone else turned up, they would have been refused, unless I called that day to tell them she needed to be released to a specific person NOT on her list, and that person wold have to produce photo ID.

I believe that rule is set up to avoid kidnappings by non-custodial parents, but it would also stop would-be molesters, as in this case.