Public School Sex Assault Shock: Investigation Uncovers Staggering Stats

For years we have heard of sexual assault happening on college campuses, but a new report by the Associated Press reveals that K-12 students in public schools are being sexually assaulted by other students and very little is being done to protect them.

Chaz Wing was 12 when boys at his school started bullying him, the AP reported.

Wing swore under oath that boys at Brunswick Junior High School in Maine raped him and left him bleeding.

He said almost from the first day at his school, kids harassed him, taunted him about his weight and subjected him to something called a "gay test."

In 2012, he confessed to his mom, "they hurt me," he cried.

He said he'd been raped, three times.

Chaz repeatedly told teachers and school officials about the insults and physical attacks but he didn't report being raped until a year later.

Though the school said it could not prove whether any rapes occurred, the AP found that school administrators allowed Chaz's bullying to escalate and then failed to adequately investigate his allegations of sexual abuse.

Chaz Wing eventually filed a lawsuit against the school district.

According to the lawsuit, the boys crawled under the door of the bathroom stall that Chaz was using, threatened him with a knife, ordered him to the ground and overpowered him. After they raped him, Chaz said, one boy threatened to burn down his house, harm his family and kill his pets if anyone found out — then stabbed his right arm.

He said he was raped twice more by boys at his school.

His story is just one out of 17,000 official reports of sexual assaults by students on other students in public schools, from fall 2011 to spring 2015.

Just like other cases of sexual assault, many of these attacks go unreported.

"Schools are required to keep students safe," said Charol Shakeshaft, a Virginia Commonwealth University professor who specializes in school sexual misconduct. "It is part of their mission. It is part of their legal responsibility. It isn't happening. Why don't we know more about it, and why isn't it being stopped?"

A civil rights law called Title IX is supposed to protect students experiencing bullying or sexual harassment.  According to the U.S. Department of Education, school districts are required to investigate such claims. But there is no federal mandate to track sexual violence.

Christians might say this is all the more reason to pull their kids from public schools.

Dr. James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, recently encouraged parents to withdraw their children from public schools. 

Dobson is not alone.

Rod Dreher, whose book, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation, calls for such a Christian exodus. 

But AP's findings revealed that younger students are also at risk for sexual assault by other students.

There are even victims of this type of assault at Christian schools.

"What's described in this article isn't just limited to public school systems, said Boz Tchividjian, former child abuse chief prosecutor and founder of GRACE – Godly Response to Abuse in the Christian Environment.

"You're talking about behaviors that transcend all communities and cultures, " Tchividjian told CBN News.

"It's naïve to place your child in a Christian school and think there will be no problem," he said.

For example, The Association of Christian Schools International listed the following case involving sexual assault of a student by a student on its website:

"A four-year-old child in a parochial preschool program was allowed to go 40 feet down the hall to a restroom while a substitute preschool teacher stood in the doorway watching. At the same time, another four-year-old child asked to get a drink. When the teacher left the doorway to attend to a crying child inside the classroom, the boy getting a drink entered the restroom and sexually assaulted the other boy. The parents sued, alleging that St. Paul's Preschool was negligent in its care and supervision of children."

About five percent of the sexual violence in schools involved 5-and 6-year-olds, reports the AP.

Student-on-student assaults ranged from rape and sodomy to forced oral sex and fondling, but the incidents were often mischaracterized as bullying, hazing or consensual behavior.

Locations where sexual assault attacks occurred included bathrooms, hallways, and locker rooms in schools across the country.

Schools were frequently unwilling or ill-equipped to address the problem, the AP found, with administrators and educators in some school districts, covering up evidence to protect their schools' image.

"No principal wants their school to be the rape school, to be listed in the newspaper as being investigated. Schools try to bury it. It's the courageous principal that does the right thing," said Dr. Bill Howe, a former K-12 teacher who spent 17 years overseeing Connecticut's state compliance with Title IX, the federal law used to help protect victims of sexual assault in schools.

"Everyone feels like we don't have a problem, and the reason they feel that way is they have their heads in the sand," said Oregon psychologist Wilson Kenney, who has helped develop student intervention programs.

Tchividjian said the AP story is tragic but not surprising because the issue is often silenced for many of the same reasons we've encountered in churches.

The problem he said is that "institutions want to protect their reputations, don't understand warning signs and have a low view of kids."

"We demonstrate how we value children by how we respond to things like this," said Tchividjian.

CBN News has reported in the past about investigations into reports of child sexual abuse at missionary boarding schools and on missionary compounds.  Those reports have surfaced in more than twenty denominations.

The Brunswick school district eventually settled Chaz Wing's case, giving him $50,000 and a promise to do a better job at tracking assault cases.

But he didn't receive the one thing he hoped for -- an apology. 

Meanwhile, Tchividjian said it is up to parents to become more aware.

"You as a parent have a right to know what the school is doing as it relates to the issues in this report."

He added, "You should know how your school is training teachers and students on this issue."

He also said that schools have proactive.

"Schools have to become much more educated on these issues and become much more vigilant.