Memphis-Shelby County schools mishandled sexual abuse cases

A report from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found that schools in Memphis-Shelby County improperly handled reports of sexual abuse for years.

The report, released Friday, said teachers or substitutes sexually abused students in seven incidents over three school years. The students were at all levels of school, from elementary to high school.

“District records show that during the same time period, there were an additional 53 reported incidents of staff-to-student sexual harassment, excluding sexual assault, and a total of 88 incidents of student-to-student sexual harassment,” a press release on the matter said.

According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, a total of 148 incidents were reported between 2017 and 2020.

According to a 20-page letter addressed to Superintendent Dr. Marie Feagins, the compliance review was initiated in March 2020. The letter also stated that MSCS had violated Title IX in several ways, one of which was the lack of a designated Title IX coordinator “for significant portions of the review period.”

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The district also failed to comply with the code of federal regulations regarding its nondiscrimination statement and harassment policy. MSCS also violated Title IX in its recordkeeping of sexual abuse allegations, the report said.

“The District’s administrative practices – including the failure to maintain any records for most cases involving allegations of sexual abuse, as well as inconsistent reporting of the same data to OCR for purposes of the mandatory Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) in 2017-2018 and for this compliance review – failed to meet the District’s Title IX obligation under 34 CFR Section 106.71 to maintain sufficient records for the District or OCR to make compliance determinations,” the letter stated.

Other violations MSCS has committed under Title IX include:

Failure to coordinate the response to reports of sexual harassment, including sexual assault, through the Title IX Coordinator as required during the period when a Title IX Coordinator was designated.
The Title IX coordinator was not involved in the majority of sexual harassment cases reviewed for this investigation. In addition, no Title IX coordinator was involved in incidents involving staff.

The press release about the compliance audit states that in a case where a teacher was convicted of soliciting the sexual exploitation of a minor and allegedly encouraged children to “inappropriately touch each other,” the records do not show the involvement of the Title IX coordinator.

The press release states that MSCS must take the following steps to complete the investigation:

Prepare and publish a compliant non-discrimination notice.
Designate, train, and publicly disclose a Title IX coordinator(s).
Review all policies describing the district’s response to sexual harassment to ensure that the policies meet the requirements of Title IX and are consistent with each other.
Review all complaints of sexual abuse of students and staff during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years to ensure that each complaint has been resolved in accordance with Title IX. If not, provide appropriate remedies.
Provide training on the Title IX process and revised grievance procedures for district employees.
Develop or revise the procedure for documenting and tracking complaints of sexual abuse, including the steps taken as part of the district’s investigation of such complaints.
Conduct a survey of students and parents to determine if the district needs to take additional steps to address sexual harassment in schools. Obtain approval from the OCR for any subsequent steps.
Develop a plan to ensure that complete and accurate data are submitted to the CRDC in the future, and ensure that all employees responsible for reporting data to the CRDC are instructed on how to report data to the CRDC in accordance with the plan.

MSCS did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication.