A lady accuses a schoolmate of raping her at age 12. The varsity system says she is making it up. | Schooling

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A 24-year-old girl instructed jurors Tuesday that she was repeatedly raped and sexually harassed a decade in the past as a seventh-grade pupil in Virginia, and that faculty officers reacted to her pleas for assist with indifference.

Legal professionals for the college system say she is making it up, and she or he wept on the stand when she was cross-examined about proof suggesting her allegations had been unfaithful.

An eight-person civil jury in U.S. District Courtroom in Alexandria must resolve whether or not the girl — recognized in court docket papers solely by her initials B.R. — is telling the reality, and whether or not faculty officers must be held liable for his or her response.

The case is one amongst a number of high-profile sexual misconduct circumstances which were filed in recent times in opposition to northern Virginia faculty methods. Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has faulted faculty methods for his or her responses to problems with pupil security.

The case involving B.R. stretches again to allegations she was raped and harassed as a 12-year-old pupil at Rachel Carson Center College in Reston, part of the state’s largest faculty system, Fairfax County Public Faculties.

B.R.’s allegations had been the impetus for a 2014 settlement with the U.S. Division of Schooling and the college system, over accusations the district did not adequately examine the coed’s criticism.

However the faculty system admitted no wrongdoing as a part of that settlement. And within the ongoing civil trial introduced by B.R., the district alleges that she fabricated the rape allegations.

In court docket papers, the district has accused B.R. of perpetrating a “fraud upon the court docket.”

The varsity system’s attorneys launched proof Tuesday of social media posts and textual content messages again from 2011 that appear to recommend that B.R. and her alleged rapist — a 13-year-old eighth grader — had been truly a boyfriend and girlfriend who willingly engaged in intercourse acts.

In one of many texts, B.R. flatly tells the boy “I really like you” at a time when she now says she was being repeatedly raped by the boy after faculty at a bus cease.

B.R., in line with the college system, solely claimed the intercourse was in opposition to her will after the boy broke up together with her and after her mom found a salacious voicemail message on the woman’s cellphone and alerted faculty officers.

B.R., although, was adamant in her testimony that she was raped a number of occasions by the coed on the bus cease and in some close by woods, and that different children routinely surrounded her and fondled her on faculty grounds at her locker.

She testified Tuesday that she despatched textual content messages purportedly exhibiting a keen sexual relationship solely as a result of her attacker threatened her and made her ship them in order that nobody would consider her if she ever claimed rape.

And he or she denied that she was the creator of a number of different social media posts that appeared to point a consensual sexual relationship between the 2, regardless of particulars within the messages that included her locker quantity in school and different specifics that correlated on to her.

The varsity district additionally argues that B.R.’s claims have developed through the years. The primary written criticism that she made to highschool officers in November 2011 makes no allegations of rape or unwelcome bodily contact. As an alternative, it says that she was referred to as names, that she was falsely accused of promiscuity, and that boys had been crowding her and giving her “seductive appears to be like.”

B.R. acknowledged in her testimony that she by no means instructed faculty officers concerning the rape allegations. However she mentioned she instructed them in conversations that boys in school had been touching her breasts and genitalia, and that her complaints had been largely ignored over a interval of months earlier than she lastly withdrew from the college.

“I felt like I misplaced my voice as a 12-year-old,” she mentioned. “I felt like nobody believed me.”

Her allegations have additionally developed since she first filed her lawsuit in 2019. In a single amended model of her criticism, B.R. mentioned that teams of unknown males gang-raped her a number of occasions in a college closet, and she or he instructed in court docket papers that the assaults had been associated to gang trafficking. In her testimony at trial, although. B.R. made no point out of these alleged gang rapes.

The trial is scheduled to conclude subsequent month.

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