New lawsuit filed by Myers Park student over sexual assault case
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Title IX complaints in CMS
From lawsuits at Myers Park High to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools reassigning administrators amid controversy, this is the latest on sexual assault cases and Title IX issues in the district.
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A former Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools student and tennis player who says her report of being raped in a high school bathroom in 2016 wasn’t properly investigated is suing the district.
In a federal complaint her lawyer filed Wednesday, former Myers Park High student Serena Evans alleged school leaders, and by extension board officials, violated her rights under Title IX.
Evans, now 20 years old, and her attorney Christina Graziano, of Maryland-based KBA Attorneys, allege CMS failed to protect Evans, who was a teen at the time, from sexual harassment and assault, ignored multiple other reports of sexual violence on the Myers Park campus and retaliated against Evans for reporting her alleged assault.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for North Carolina’s middle district, is seeking damages in excess of $75,000 for each of five counts.
CMS on Wednesday afternoon did not respond to the The Charlotte Observer’s request for comment. Under Title IX — part of federal education law — public schools are required to methodically investigate reports about possible harassment or sexual violence as well as take steps to prevent further victimization or harm.
“Serena is the mouthpiece for all of the other survivors across CMS,” Graziano told The Charlotte Observer Wednesday. “She’s sending the message to them that yes, you can come forward.”
Myers Park lawsuit
Graziano said Evans was the victim of a “massive” failure by the school’s administration to protect her under state law and Title IX mandates.
In an investigation published in July by The Charlotte Observer, Evans and her mother Kay Mayes said it took four months for high school administrators to take an official statement about what Evans said happened in a bathroom in 2016. Evans says the assault and subsequent response led to her leaving the school, with the lawsuit alleging the district took no disciplinary action against the male student involved.
The lawsuit this week lays out a similar set of events.
The district last year refused to answer questions from the Observer about Evans’ case, including a question about whether Myers Park leaders properly opened a Title IX investigation at the time of Evans and her mother telling the principal she’d been raped.
Evans, according to past interviews and her lawsuit, was a freshman at Myers Park when a senior football player pushed her into the handicap stall of the boys bathroom on Oct. 25, 2016, and forced her to perform oral sex on him. He then forcibly raped Evans, the lawsuit says.
Afterward, the football player told her: “This is our little secret, you can’t and won’t tell anyone,” the complaint states.
‘Ignore the boys’
Evans is one of many former students, the Observer has reported, to share stories of harassment or sexual violence on the Myers Park High campus. Harassment or sexual violence also was reported during the 2021-22 school year at Olympic and Hawthorne high schools. All have the same thing in common: alleged victims say CMS officials mishandled responses to reports.
Students have organized protests calling for greater transparency, better protocols and more education at school regarding how reports of sexual assault are handled. On Monday, seventh- and eighth-grade students at Randolph IB Middle School protested in front of their school during the middle of the day. Students walked out of Olympic High School in October, calling on more to be done to protect students after a fellow student reported being raped on campus. Last summer, students mostly from Myers Park High, including Evans and her mom, marched almost a mile in a call for school leaders to take reports of sexual assault and/or harassment more seriously.
Evans’ lawsuit claims CMS failed to prevent and stop sexual harassment and assault on its campuses Evans faced harassment starting as a seventh-grader at Alexander Graham Middle School, a feeder school to Myers Park High.
The lawsuit alleges Evans was sexually harassed by male classmates beginning in the fall of 2014-2015. It took the form of “unwanted physical touching, including groping her breasts and buttocks, ‘accidentally’ bumping into or grabbing her when she was bent over, as well as verbal harassment such as vulgar and sexually suggestive comments about Evans’ body and the perpetrators’ desire to have sex with her,” according to the complaint.
The complaint alleges teachers and/or administrators overheard the harassment because it happened in classrooms and hallways, at recess and the lunchroom, but when Evans’ reported the sexual harassment to her teachers, school administrators, and her counselor, they all encouraged her to“ignore the boys” and to make concessions for their behavior since “girls mature faster than boys do.”
This story was originally published June 8, 2022 at 2:40 PM.
