Bradd and Edna Hancock have filed suit in federal court against the North Sanpete School District and School Board, the Sanpete County Sheriff, and school administrators, reports Courthouse News Service, alleging that throughout middle school and high school the district failed to supervise and protect their son, J.H. The suit claims students began harassing J.H. on buses and in the halls of North Sanpete Middle School, “calling him names like ‘fag’ and ‘queer’ and calling him ‘gay.’”
After the first assault in middle school, school security cameras captured another assault on their son, the parents say, but principal Randy Shelley refused to release the footage. Shelley, a defendant, “indicated to Bradd [Hancock] that he did not care what happened in the future between the boys because if there was another incident involving J.H. – then J.H. would be expelled,” according to the complaint. The parents add: “The middle school’s response, and particularly defendant Shelley’s response, was catastrophic for J.H. because J.H. now had no way out of the situation or to escape the bullying,” the complaint states.
The parents say the bullying from three students continued for the next 1½ years, “and the school district did not take any significant measures to stop the bullying and harassment.” ”The bullying by this group of students and the school district’s ineptitude in handling matter led to J.H. having a mental breakdown and being put in detention,” and “ultimately led to J.H. being put on suicide watch,” the parents say. ”J.H. feared for his mental and physical safety each time he went to school and the school district was indifferent to these experiences and allowed them to continue.” When their son got to North Sanpete High School, the harassment “substantially increased.”
J.H. tried to kill himself in 2008, “which the school district was aware of,” his parents say. ”J.H. attempted suicide in 2008 because of the harassment and abuse he was suffering through, the school district’s seemingly inability [sic] to help him, the school district’s insistence that it was J.H.’s fault, and the hopelessness of the situation at school,” according to the complaint. “J.H. began playing football in high school as an outlet for his fears, anxiety and depression,” the parents say. “The football coach intentionally made things worse for J.H. “At the beginning of J.H.’s junior year of high school, the football coach, in front of the whole team, told J.H. that J.H. looked like a pedophile,” according to the complaint.
When their son sought counseling from a vice principal about his “relationship problems with a female student at the high school,” the Hancocks say, the vice principal “attempted to intervene in the relationship and went so far as to ask the female student if she wanted to continue to date J.H. The female student responded that she wasn’t going to answer the question. Bradd Hancock says he complained about the entire series of incidents to defendant principal Jim Bowles, upon which “the school district and its officials decided that J.H. needed to leave their district.”
The complaint continues: “Within two weeks of the Hancocks’ complaints to Bowles, J.H. was accused of sexual assault by defendant resource officer Cole Young. … “Defendant Young pressed … teenage females to allege that J.H. had committed a sexual battery against them.” The Hancocks say the school district “did not perform any meaningful investigation into the allegations of sexual abuse … nor were the acts verified to be true.” Nonetheless, “law enforcement officials arrived at the school, handcuffed J.H., and took J.H. to the jail – without notifying J.H.’s parents of the allegations,” according to the complaint.
J.H. was suspended. His parents say they tried to enroll him in another district, but could not, because the North Sanpete School District informed the other schools that J.H. had been “expelled.” Finally, on Jan. 21, 2010, “as an actual, legal and proximate result of all the harassment alleged herein, and as an actual, legal and proximate result of all of the reckless, deliberately indifferent, negligent and other wrongful acts and omissions of defendants, and each of them, alleged herein, J.H. took his own life.”
The Hancocks say the defendants “engaged in outrageous conduct by intentionally not following state mandated policies concerning the prevention of suicide, hazing and harassment, and/or negligently permitting an environment where J.H. would be more likely to commit suicide, and where he was harassed and hazed.” The Hancocks seek punitive damages for wrongful death, fraud and assault and battery.
Source: Courthouse News Service, 1/20/12, By Jonny Bonner
- See more at: http://legalclips.nsba.org/2012/01/24/parents-of-student-who-committed-suicide-sue-utah-district-for-deliberate-indifference-to-bullying/#sthash.PFKPfgYG.dpuf[Editor's Note: According to the Hancocks' legal complaint, the bullying consisted of verbal harassment that focused on J.H.'s perceived sexual orientation, as well as physical assaults. The parents do not allege a claim under Title IX. They allege a cause of action for violation of their own right to familial relationships under the First and Fourteenth Amendment, as well as state torts including fraud, intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault and batter, negligence, wrongful death and breach of fiduciary duty.In September 2011, Legal Clips summarized a a Pennsylvania federal district court's decision in Kirby v. Loyalsock Twp. Sch. Dist. granting summary judgment in favor of a school district and individual school officials in a suit brought by a former student who claimed the defendants violated her constitutional rights to free association, equal protection, and procedural and substantive due process because school officials failed to discipline the students who were bullying her. Because it found that the student had failed to establish as a matter of law that her constitutional rights were violated, the court declined to address the school officials’ claim that they were entitled to qualified immunity from the suit. It, likewise, concluded that the school district could not be held liable under the theory of municipal liability, based on the manner in which the officials enforced the school district’s anti-bullying policy, because the court had ruled that the officials had not violated the student’s constitutional rights.]
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