The Kosciusko Police Department this week confirmed rumors about alleged sexual assaults among male children at Kosciusko Middle Elementary School.
Chief Herbert Dew said the department received two reports from parents of male KME students who were allegedly sexually assaulted in the school bathrooms by another student or students. One report was received Feb. 1; the other on Feb. 4.
The Chief described the first report as referring to one child being held in the bathroom and assaulted in a sexual manner by one or more fellow students.
In all, Dew said the department wrote juvenile reports for four male students listing them each as a “child in need of supervision” in relation to the assault allegations, and those reports have been submitted to Youth Court.
Dew said it remains unclear which of the four children were victims and which were perpetrators, or whether there might be overlap in the roles of each child in the incidents. He said at least two of the children were taken to the hospital by their parents and he believes testing related to potential sexual assault had been done, but said details and results were not provided to the department.
“For this age group, this is the first report like this in my 25 years, so I had to seek advice on what role we (the department) had to play,” said Dew.
According to the Chief, the department is limited in the extent to which the department can pursue the cases because the children involved are under the age of 13.
“Our hands were kind of tied on this because of the age of the children,” he said. “Youth Court doesn’t allow us to charge a child — they’ve got to be 13 years of age before we can charge someone with a crime.”
Due to those limitations, he said, it is policy to refer these cases to the school district and he believes the Department of Human Services is now involved as well.
“At the point at which we got the (initial) report, we talked with the victim’s parents and the victim and consulted with the Youth Court and made the determination to turn the investigation over to the schools and the Department of Human Services,” said Dew.
Kosciusko Superintendent of Schools Billy Ellzey said the district takes these types of allegations seriously and has policies in place to help guide the district response.
“When situations of a serious nature arise such as this, we investigate fully and involve outside agencies such as DHS and local police to help with the investigation,” he said. “When we find proof of any accusations, we follow our policies and work together with outside agencies to provide both safety and any needed counseling for students.”
Asked about school policies regarding bathroom use and supervision at the elementary school level, Ellzey said the district is now redoubling its efforts to ensure students remain safe when using bathroom facilities in the schools.
“We have procedures in place to limit the number of children in the restroom at any one time. These procedures also include teachers just outside the restroom during class restroom breaks,” Ellzey said. “We constantly look for ways to improve our procedures, and we have become more diligent on our bathroom procedures in recent weeks, including limiting the number to one-at-a-time in the restroom.”
Ellzey also said the district provides the opportunity for counseling to any student involved in incidents or situations that may affect them emotionally.
“All students involved in situations that may affect them emotionally are given the opportunity for in-house counseling, as well as counseling through outside agencies such as Life Help,” said the Superintendent. “We take these situations very seriously and we have one of our counselors who is assigned to dealing with such situations specifically for our district.”
