School For Deaf Safety Concerns Aired Preventing Sexual Assaults, Informing Parents Among Complaints

Parents of hearing-impaired children complained Tuesday that sexual assaults and molestations seem to occur with alarming frequency on the campus of Washington’s School for the Deaf, and administrators have done little to keep parents informed.

During a public forum, parents from around the state - including Spokane - whose children attend the live-in, Vancouver-based school told explosive stories about students being molested by other children. In some cases, the incidents involved students who had been suspected in previous attacks but allowed to remain in the school.

Never, the parents said, had school Superintendent Leonard Aron notified them such activity was taking place. The roughly 75 parents who attended Tuesday’s forum applauded when parent Keven Grant urged Gov. Gary Locke to fire Aron.

Aron “has failed to protect the students and deserves very severe consequences,” said Grant, a former president of the school’s advisory Parent-Staff Organization, who resigned in protest this spring and yanked his fifth-grader from the school.

Many other parents also have removed their children from the school.

Aron, reached by telephone in Vancouver, bemoaned the meeting as “unfortunate” and said some parents were blowing a few incidents out of proportion. He also said the school handled every complaint as the law required - it turned the issue over to authorities. The school is safe, he said, and parents are upset over unrelated program changes.

“You don’t yell fire in a crowded theater if there is no fire,” he said, adding that he had not been invited to the forum.

Still in dispute is exactly how many incidents - alleged or proven - of inappropriate sexual contact have been reported at the school, both this year and in the past.

While many parents claimed they’re aware of as many as five attacks in the previous school year among the 180 students, Aron only acknowledged three incidents. Confidentiality laws prevented him from revealing more, he said.

In a July letter to Sen. Joseph Zarelli, R-Vancouver, Locke repeated Aron’s assertion.

“During the past few weeks, (Washington’s School for the Deaf) has reported three situations of alleged sexual aggression to … authorities,” the governor wrote in a July 14 letter to Zarelli.

“The alleged perpetrators are three students who have been removed from the WSD campus … pending results of the investigations.”

Zarelli called Tuesday’s meeting in response to complaints from parents that they continue to hear about incidences only from each other. Just the discussion itself was enough to scare some parents.

“I’m so confused I don’t know what the real truth is,” tearful parent Patty Marks said. “Everybody has told me, `Things are fine, things are safe.’ But this sounds horrible.”

Parent Bonnie Neeley said her daughter, a sophomore, had narrowly escaped being raped in October by a “socially immature young man.” School officials decided the case was one of consensual-but-inappropriate behavior, leading Neeley to complain of a “blame the victim” mentality.

Parent Patricia Bunnell, who worked at the school as a teacher’s aide, said a boy had been accused in October of raping a girl in a bathroom, so school officials asked her to “shadow” him during the day.

She said she would sit and watch him during class, but that she had to just let him go back to his dorm unmonitored at night. She and other parents claim he attacked a boy in February.

Aron would not discuss events in detail and wouldn’t confirm or deny Bunnell’s account of events.

Several parents also told of attacks that occurred in previous years.

Teresa Franklin, of Spokane, had two daughters enrolled in the school until this year. Neither will be returning.

Franklin said that in 1997, someone broke into one daughter’s dorm room and the 10-year-old child woke up about 2:45 a.m. to find someone touching her. The school called Franklin in Spokane at 11:30 a.m. the next day. Despite repeated requests, Franklin said, she was never provided any documentation of the incident.

Her mother, Lottie Ostrander, said she had refused to enroll Franklin, who is also hearing-impaired, in the school more than two decades ago because of rumors of unmonitored sexual abuse.

Historically, the school has had “a far greater propensity for problems of a sexual nature than most schools,” Zarelli said.

But it’s a point neither Aron nor Locke’s office could dispute or support. Aron took over operations at the school in July 1998, and Locke was only made aware of the problems late this spring, said Marty Brown, Locke’s legislative liaison.

When Aron started, he requested copies of all reports made to the state’s Child Protective Services, which is required to investigate any suspected child abuse, during the previous five years. No documentation existed, according to Locke’s letter to Zarelli.

The situation is complicated further because parents are overwhelmingly pleased with the quality of their children’s education. Teachers all have master’s degrees and special training in deaf education, and several parents spoke of watching previously introverted kids blossom after enrolling. Many parents fear speaking out will lead to the school being shut down - or quality teachers departing.

“We should not have to choose between a good education or our children’s safety,” Neeley said. After Tuesday’s hearing, the governor’s office promised to examine the situation further - but said it would fall short of any internal investigation.

“We need to do some sort of systematic review of what the problems are,” Brown said. “We’re clearly going to ask some more questions.”