Five officials at Palm Beach [Florida] Central High School were arrested after they repeatedly ignored repeated pleas from a student to investigate and report the sexual assault of a fellow student who later attempted suicide, USA Today reports. They are all charged with failing to report a student’s sexual assault to police and child welfare services as required by state law.
A friend of the 15-year-old student reported that their friend had survived sexual assaults at the hands of two boys in April 2021 and in August 2021. In June 2021, the friend–using a pen with pink ink–wrote a letter detailing the April assaults the friend witnessed and noted that her friend had attempted self-harm; she gave the letter the schools choral teacher, 53-year-old Scott Houchins, who told Priscilla Carter, 55, a case worker in the district’s SafeSchools office. At the start of the subsequent school year, Carter spoke with the student and determined that the victim was not a harm to herself. During that meeting, the student reportedly told Carter about a third sexual assault that happened earlier in August.
On August 16, 2021, the victim herself told school assistant principal Daniel Snider, 49, of the assaults; Snider asked her to write an account of the assault, which he shared with principal Darren Edgecomb, 58. After getting no response from the school, the student told the other assistant principal, Nereyda Cayado de Garcia, 37, on August 17th who again informed Edgecomb. The student then subsequently reported at least one suicide attempt.
On August 19th, Edgecomb held a meeting with senior staff and announced that he had conducted his own investigation and found no basis to pursue the complaints nor did he find a reason to report the claims to police or the state’s Department of Children and Families, as is required by law, because the friend’s report was “hearsay.” Cayado de Garcia claims she didn’t report the assaults because the alleged victim said she no longer felt scared.
Edgecomb has been previously reported for violating school district policy in a 2019 grade-changing scandal in which he unilaterally changed the grades of eleven students he claimed were given unfair grades by a teacher; he never consulted with the teacher before changing the grades. He was also put on probation in 2010 for demoting and punishing a teacher who took maternity leave.