Startin' in Kindergarten: Lawyering Up on School Sex Abuse

In replacing disputed Obama-era campus-rape policies with more robust protections for the accused, the Trump administration is also expanding federal oversight to K-12 education – and giving even prepubescent pupils the right to a lawyer or an adviser during a sexual misconduct investigation. (The same goes for accused teachers.)

Come next school year, an accused grade-schooler, the accuser and their parents will get to review each other’s evidence – such as social media posts, texts, and photos – and submit written responses for the opposing parties and questions for witnesses.

Those are key legal protections embedded in new rules finalized by the U.S. Department of Education in a 2,033-page document issued in May. Lawyers who work with school districts say the new protocols will turn reviews that lasted a few hours or days into quasi-judicial proceedings lasting a month or more.

The rules consolidate and codify legal standards for handling sexual misconduct disputes from campus to kindergarten in the name of ending violations of due-process rights for the accused. But at the same time, they raise the prospect of drawing younger people into prolonged legal confrontations and escalating the disputes they are meant to resolve, critics warn.

The new K-12 policies also expand the reach of the Department of Education under Republicans, a break with their party’s past of seeking to limit the agency’s powers – or even abolish it – since President Jimmy Carter created it four decades ago.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/06/08/startin_in_kindergarten_lawyering_up_on_school_sex_abuse_123899.html