It's Not about Sex

 It’s Not About Sex

 

Lawyers for the Montgomery County Public Schools argued in a court case this summer that a violent locker room attack by some members of the JV football team that involved using a broomstick to commit sodomy on some other teammates was not a sexual assault.  The boys have been criminally charged with rape.  And some have pled guilty in a criminal case.

But the lawyers for the school system made an interesting argument during a July hearing.   They were arguing against legal claims made by the families of the victims.  “This is a male-on-male incident.  There is no indication that this was motivated by sexual desire.  They weren’t yelling sexual slurs about maybe homosexuality or things like that.” Said an attorney for the school system.   The families are arguing that the school system failed in its duty to provide supervision and to protect students from violence, particularly when the environment was known to be violent.

According to the school district, if these acts were non-sexual they would not be covered by Title IX which includes areas to protect students from severe sexual harassment.  If the judge would declare the attack as non-sexual then Title IX would not provide protection.  The argument was rejected by the judge.  This civil case follows a criminal case in the fall of 2018.  Two of the four students have pleaded guilty in juvenile court to second degree rape and attempted second degree rape.  The victims in this case were 14 and 15 years old.  The perpetrators were all 15 and on the JV varsity football team.   A spokesperson for the County said that these arguments were just legal arguments and that county policy did not consider sexual desire as a condition of harassment .  Prosecutors in the criminal case described the attacks as vicious sexual assaults.  The perpetrators blocked the door of the locker room while other boys pulled down the victim's pants and pushed the broom handle into the boy's rectum several times through the boys’ underwear.  Since the assault, one of the victims has transferred schools while another says that he is routinely pointed out as “the boy who got the broom”.  Similar, but not identical instances, have been tried in Tennessee and Arizona and found to be covered by Title IX.  Psychologists have said sodomy is favored as harassment because it is a quick and easy way to humiliate a victim.  Schools have a duty to protect students.  The attorney for the families has cited at least seven previous instances of locker room violence yet the school system did nothing to increase supervision nor train its coaches.  One of the students involved in the attacks had a history of aggressive sexual behavior and was transferred to the new school because of it.   The sending principal warned the receiving principal of the boy’s history. He recommended the boy be under close supervision at all times.  The receiving school’s defense was that the boy had only attended this high school for 40 days and the school had not had an opportunity to ramp up its supervision. 

The judge’s response was, “well you might not want to tell that to the jury.  The fact of the matter is if he’s such a menace he should be supervised at all times and that starts with day 1 not day 40.”

The case is ongoing but most folks would agree, rape has little to do with sexual desire and everything to do with domination and aggression and both were clear in this case.