Why Do Girls Get Raped in Philly Schools

by Victoria A. Brownworth

A Germantown High School freshman was charged with rape and other crimes on Tuesday, May 8. The student, whose name has not been released, was held overnight pending arraignment and disposition of custody, which will determine whether he is released or held pending a preliminary hearing.

The arrest came following a report by another GHS freshman that she had been raped by the student before class on Friday morning, May 4. According to the alleged victim, she and the male student had been talking on the stairwell in the basement area of the school around 7:30 a.m., before first period classes, when he allegedly raped her. She said she screamed for help, but no one heard her.

The alleged victim went to her first class after the assault, but, according to police, broke down during the class, told a female teacher what had happened and the teacher called police. School District police were also called.

Capt. John Darby of the Philadelphia Police Department’s Special Victims Unit said in a press conference after the arrest that there was “compelling evidence” that a rape had occurred, including DNA evidence. He said that because the incident had happened so close to the time when police were called, and because the area was monitored by video cameras, “probable cause [for an arrest] was met by day’s end on Friday. What we had was very compelling, to the point where there wasn’t much hesitation,” said Darby. “It’s an unfortunate incident.”

A rape kit was done on the alleged victim after the assault. The alleged victim had known the suspect for a few weeks prior to the alleged rape.

The alleged rapist spoke with investigators and turned himself in to police on Tuesday in the company of his family. He has been charged with four felonies, including rape, aggravated assault, sexual assault and unlawful restraint, as well as five misdemeanors, false imprisonment, indecent exposure, indecent assault, simple assault and recklessly endangering another person.

A preliminary hearing will be held within the next ten days.

Neither the alleged victim nor the suspect had returned to GHS since the attack and Fernando Gallard, a spokesperson for the School District said that the suspect will not return to school during the investigation. However, according to the School District’s own “zero tolerance” policy, the suspect should be suspended within ten days with intent to expel.

This incident–the alleged rape of a 14-year-old girl in the early morning in her own school–is just one of a shocking number of sexual assaults crimes throughout the Philadelphia School District which has been determined to be one of the most violent in the country.

The area where the alleged rape occurred at GHS is supposed to be monitored by security, but was not. Officials with the School District are investigating.

They don’t have far to look. The District budget has been slashed radically since last year and security was one of the first things to go. Unfortunately for this latest victim of sexual assault in the Philly schools, there was no one there to hear her when she screamed because the person who should have been there was laid off in recent cuts. 

That said, it’s not at all clear whether security would have changed anything in what Capt. Darby called, in an unfortunate choice of words, “an unfortunate incident.”

I grew up a block from GHS. It was a hell hole then and it is a hell hole now. It may have a great football team, but the sign out in front of the school that says the school is a place to learn and grow is surely meant to be ironic. GHS has consistently been listed among the cities most dangerous schools in a school district that is already listed as the most dangerous in the state.

This is far from the first assault at GHS. The school is notorious for violence–against teachers as well as students. One of the worst assaults on a teacher in School District history occurred at GHS several years ago when two students broke the neck of a teacher who had been at the school for decades.

In April, the Philadelphia Inquirer won the coveted Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their year-long investigative report on violence in the city’s schools. When the award was announced, the School District responded with a statement  congratulating the Inquirer. “We are diligently working on new programs to increase safety in District schools, ensuring that every school in the district is a safe, high-performing school. Your unwavering commitment has made a difference in our schools.”

But what the Inquirer uncovered – 30,000 incidents in five years – put Philadelphia at the top nationally in school violence. What’s more, those were the reported incidents. Rape counselors in Philadelphia note that the majority of rape victims, especially teen victims, do not report attacks. In fact, the young woman who was allegedly raped at GHS last week did not initially report the attack. She attempted to just move forward with her class schedule as if the assault had not occurred, but was ultimately too distraught to do so.

The Inquirer investigation found that sexual assaults are commonplace in the schools. And begin–horrifyingly–with students under ten. Ten is the cut-off age for actually charging a child with a violent crime. Over 1,100 assaults defined as indecent were attributed to Philadelphia students ten and under in 2010, according to Pennsylvania education statistics. These crimes included a ten-year-old forcing the head of another ten-year-old onto his groin. Reportedly, eight out of ten of schools with the highest number of “morals” offenses were elementary schools.

As the age of students increases, so does the intensity of the assaults. In October 2011, a group of 4th grade boys sexually assaulted another 4th grader at William Bryant Elementary School. The “incident” was handled “internally,” according to the School District. The age of the students was cited as a mitigating factor.

What happens next when students sexually assault other students? The student involved in the GHS assault May 4 is undoubtedly headed for a jail sentence, either in a plea bargain or a trial. But when students are neither charged by police nor forced to leave the school where the assault occurred, what happens to the victim?

One of the questions I have about the GHS incident and others like it, is what kind of atmosphere is being fostered in a school so that a student could think he could rape another student and get away with it?

The massive cutbacks and other radical changes proposed by the School District do not take these extremes of violence or just the simmering atmosphere in which violence can spark into account. Why is security an early cut for the numbers crunchers? What makes them think that the safety of kids in the schools is readily expendable?

What is the School District doing in response to the Inquirer’s expose? What has been instituted to both chart the incidence of violence and work to stop it? While it’s true that security at GHS may not have stopped the rape from occurring, it’s equally true that the lack of security made the alleged rapist more confident that he could perpetrate the rape and likely not get caught.

But whether or not this young man thought that he could escape prosecution with a he said/she said accounting, there is still that question of atmosphere. What allows so many schools in Philadelphia to devolve into crime-infested warehouses where children and teens have to attempt to be educated in a veritable war zone?

What does the School District do for victims like the GHS student? Is there a plan for victim assistance? Or do the victims of assaults perpetrated on school property not meet a level of concern by District leadership?

The alleged rape at GHS was indeed an “unfortunate incident.” What will be more unfortunate is if the brutality of it is allowed to fade out of everyone’s consciousness but the victim’s. It’s way past time that the School District focus on making Philly schools safer rather than allowing and atmosphere of peril to pervade even the kindergarten classroom.

Follow me on Twitter @VABVOX and follow my political blog at www.victoriabrownworth.com