Texas Student: After Reporting Rape, I Was Accused of "Public Lewdness," Sent to Disciplinary School

We begin today’s show with a shocking story about a Texas teenager named Rachel Bradshaw-Bean, who was accused of "public lewdness" and removed from her high school after she reported being raped in the band room. Her rapist was punished by being sent to a disciplinary school. Bradshaw-Bean was sent there too. She said she was treated "like a prisoner" for reporting the crime. The incident occurred in 2010, but it is now getting national attention after Bradshaw-Bean decided to speak publicly about being raped and about what happened next. In the summer of 2012, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights ruled that the school had violated Title IX, the federal law prohibiting gender discrimination in education. We speak to Bradshaw-Bean and Sandra Park, a senior attorney with the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. "What we know about rape in this country is that half of the women who are raped are under the age of 18, so we are talking about girls, and a significant number of those sexual assaults are occurring in schools," Park says. "It’s vitally important that school administrators and police really understand their obligations to respond to the violence and not turn around and penalize the victim like they did in Rachel’s case."

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Source: democracynow.org
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