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Scott Rose, friend of the Blend who blogs at PoliticusUSA, does an incredible job of digging deeper into the case in the Lone Star State of H.S., who when she was 16, suffered a sexual assault by three Silsbee High School jocks. A jury indicted two of her assailants for sexual assault of a child. Star player Rahkeem Bolton pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge, allowing him to not only return to school, but to rejoin the team. The local D.A. proved he was incompetent to handle the case against star player Bolton when he announced to the public that everybody had been drunk the night of the assault and that therefore, the allegations could not be proven. But if the victim was too drunk to give reliable testimony later, wouldn’t she also have been too drunk to give consent? But the story of humiliation and debasement only got worse.:
The United States Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a review of the case brought by the woman, who is known only as HS. Lower courts had ruled that she was speaking for the school, rather than for herself, when serving on a cheerleading squad – meaning that she had no right to stay silent when coaches told her to applaud.….As a cheerleader, HS served as a mouthpiece through which [the school district] could disseminate speech – namely, support for its athletic teams,” the appeals court decision says. “This act constituted substantial interference with the work of the school because, as a cheerleader, HS was at the basketball game for the purpose of cheering, a position she undertook voluntarily.”
Scott took a look at the climate in Silsbee that produced this tragedy (including the victim being charged with filing a “frivilous” lawsuit and fined $45K), both at the school and in city government that will curl your hair. From the must-read “Texas Cheerleader Who Was Assaulted Never Had A Chance“:
I want the reader to have some idea of how important football is to Silsbee, Texas and then how important Rahkeem Bolton was to Silsbee, Texas high school football. The Silsbee Tigers play in Tiger Stadium. With its latest seating expansion, that stadium fits 10,000 spectators. Tickets, sold onsite or in the school administration building, are $5 for adults, $3 for students ahead of time but $5 at the door. On a good day, the box office could be $35,000, maybe $40K or more.…The victim was told that preliminary results from the rape kit showed some DNA evidence that could inculpate the defendants. Yet the victim kept hearing that due to case backlogs, the full rape kit analysis results wouldn’t be ready for four months, five months, one year – depends which report you read. There is an appearance that the can kept getting kicked down the road for the date the victim was being given for when the rape kit results would be ready. The victim now says she wants to study forensic science, motivated in part by the delay in the processing of her rape kit.
Does it sound right, that a community taking in $35K, $40K per home game football match can’t get a rape kit processed any faster than that? I called the public information department of the Texas Department of Public Safety Crime Laboratory DNA Section. I asked “Is it possible for somebody to get expedited rape kit results from the DNA Section of your Crime Lab?” They told me “Yes. If a prosecutor or investigator says they have a case coming up and need results promptly, we can have the complete rape kit results for them within three weeks.”
The treatment of this teen girl by the justice system was beyond heinous. And since this is Texas, you know bible-beating hypocrisy — and add in conflict of instance — had to fit into this story at some point.
With persistence, the family by June, 2009 got the criminal justice system to convene a second grand jury. Attorney David Barlow was named special prosecutor. The jury indicted Rakheem Bolton on a charge of sexual assault of a child. A second football player, Christian Rountree was indicted as well. A third football player originally charged in the case was left out on the second go-round. Barlow said that the grand jury didn’t have jurisdiction over him.Reverend Billy Ray Robinson, President of the Jasper, Texas branch of the NAACP, protested the indictment in the NAACP’s name. Reverend Robinson is, according to one local source, Rakheem Bolton’s great uncle. The video of the Reverend’s criticism of the indictment ends with appeals to God and Jesus.
Please click over to PoliticusUSA to read the whole sordid tale. It’s hard not to boil over with anger. This story needs wide circulation.
5 Comments
A fact is wrongHe was expelled after he was indicted. He was not allowed to go back to school or be on the team after he plead guilty. The game happened in 2009, they were indicted in 2010. The first two grand juries declined to indict them, so they were allowed back in school.
The story is still a travesty, the treatment of the girl was horrific. The system and the school failed her miserably. But we need to make sure that the facts are correct when we talk about it, or else it can be played off as a lying liberal bias.
Doesn’t surprise meI went to High School in a hick town of 5,000 in Oklahoma and football players were treated like royalty. When any of them ever got into trouble (which happened a lot) they would get no more than a slap on the wrist.
I was in the wrong clique so we were guilty until proven innocent.
The ruling is correct, the circumstances are horrendousI agree with ojrocks, “The story is still a travesty, the treatment of the girl was horrific. The system and the school failed her miserably.” The way the case against her assailant was prosecuted was inexcusable, and the $45K judgement for filing a “frivilous” lawsuit is pathetic.
Having said that, I do agree with the courts’ finding that, as a member of the cheerleading squad, she has an obligation to carry out the squad’s mission, that is to lead the audience in cheering for the team. She is speaking for the school and not for herself when she is on the cheerleading squad.
When I’m working for my company, there are things that I am supposed to say and things that I cannot say when I am representing the company in public, as well as things I cannot say in the office while I am on work time. My company has some control over my speech.
Years ago, I was a volunteer coordinator for our local AIDS information line. We had one volunteer who had beliefs about how HIV could be transmitted that were partially at odds with the official stance of the agency. That volunteer insisted on giving out her information when she took calls, and we had to tell her that her volunteer service would no longer be needed.
Perhaps leading cheers is not as important or consequential as either of the examples I have cited above, but the same principle applies. To some people, high school sports and cheerleading are very important.
TypicalIt’s not like rape survivors have any kind of right to human compassion or justice from a goddamn court. Or anyone.
Not quite…Her job is to cheer for the team, not any particular individual. Most workplaces make allowances for problem between individual “employees.” The school could have simply had her cheer for the other athletes and simply remain quiet and unobtrusive when it came time for the squad to cheer for her assailant in particular. She would still be fulfilling her duties.
Of course, it also occurs to me that the school and courts could be setting an extremely interesting precedent with this whole “cheerleaders and athletes are being employed by the school to do a job” argument.
Consider this: The unnamed athlete (I’ll call him U.A.) works for the school. H.S. also works for the school. This makes them a coworker. The athlete had allegedly assaulted H.S. previously. The school was aware of the allegations, and yet did nothing to protect H.S. until the investigation was complete. In fact, they put her in the same environment as U.A. and forced her to “work” in close proximity to him. I suspect that qualifies as a hostile work environment and could potentially open the school up to a sexual harassment charge and investigation.