Betrayed: Chicago Public schools fail to protect students from sexual abuse

The Chicago Tribune reports:

As the school year was winding down in 2008, a boy with developmental disabilities reported to school officials that another student at Orr high school had beat and then sexually attacked him. Police arrested and charged the student.

But the school did not discipline him. The district did not investigate, records show. Then it was summer.

In September, when the alleged victim and attacker were back at Orr again, a judge in the criminal case against the student ordered Chicago Public Schools to provide its official investigation into the matter. None existed, so the district hastily conducted one.


That belated investigation concluded that there was "credible evidence" that a sexual attack had happened as the boy described and that the school had failed to discipline the alleged attacker.

But even then, the alleged attacker remained at Orr. The district told the Tribune that it could not say whether he was disciplined after the investigation because of a federal law that deals with student privacy.

The student's mother told the Tribune he stayed at Orr until he dropped out of school. He died earlier this year.

CPS acknowledged that it did not punish any school employees for what it now calls a "significant error" in failing to initiate an investigation or discipline the alleged attacker. The district said it has opened a new review of the case in light of the Tribune's questions.

Government schools in Chicago: a threatening and hostile learning environment for children ..