How seriously do school districts take complaints of sexual abuse, and how long should it be after a complaint is made before an investigation ensues?
In Adams County, Colorado, lawyers agreed to a $5 million settlement. Gilbert Trujillo, a teacher at Dupont Elementary School, was sentenced to 25 years to life for sexual assault on two students. The sentence began in 2017. He was originally tried for six assaults however only two were actually proven.
The lawyers are celebrating, of course, claiming it was “the highest known individual settlement in Colorado history for claims brought against a school district.”
However, the lawyers are not the victims, nor is the school district. The victims are the 9-year-old girls who were molested, and who must live with the scars. The parents were also victims, of course. They were further victimized because they made several complaints about Trujillo that were ignored.
Who Cared?
The little girl abused at age nine is now nearing 19. There is no need to go into the details. The details are easily found. They are not pretty “images.”
Starting in 2010, the girls parents started making complaints to the school district.
“We couldn’t get a straight answer out of anybody,” said the father. “Whether we called the school board and left messages, whether we called the school itself and left messages. Tried to talk to anybody there, they refused to talk to us.”
I would like to quote just part of a letter the school board has recently sent out to parents:
“Mr. Trujillo was employed as a teacher here in 2011 when he committed the criminal behavior. While Mr. Trujillo is and will remain behind bars, the District is deeply saddened by his abhorrent conduct. Student safety and well-being are of paramount importance in Adams County School District 14, and it is doing everything in its power to ensure all students are safe at school.”
The school district is making all of the right “lawyerly” statements, but from an ethical point of view why did it take a full-blown court case in 2017 to bring out the details of sexual assaults that occurred years before?
The young girl did not shut down and she did not hide what happened. She told her parents. Her parents, in turn, made specific complaints that went unheeded.
Of course, it leads to the question of “Why?”
Assumptions and Inconvenience
What were the assumptions when the girl complained and how did the school and school board justify ignoring the complaints of the parents? What was the thought process behind disregarding the children and parents?
To my mind, it was a complete ethical breakdown where the educators and board could not fathom that “one of their own” could be capable of such behavior. Perhaps Trujillo came across as “a nice man,” or perhaps they questioned him and he was able to convince them of the ridiculousness of the claims. Most sadly, in this string of “perhapses” was the fact that the buck was passed, one person to another because no one wanted to begin the process of investigation. Meanwhile, the girl saw her abuser every day – and no one did anything.
It comes right back to ethics. Clearly, Gilbert Trujillo is a predator. But the others, the teachers and board, were not. They had the ethical power to confront it, attack it, and bring the teacher to justice. No one did.
Unless educators are given the tools and the “courage” to confront sexual assault, these kinds of situations will keep repeating themselves. The victims will bear the scars, but good people, ethically-trained people can stop it.
