RICHMOND, Va. (CN) — A Fourth Circuit panel heard arguments Tuesday to determine if a pair of Charlotte high school officials accused of being deliberately indifferent to seeing a student being pulled into the woods should be protected by qualified immunity.
The plaintiff Jane Doe was a junior in high school in 2015 when she was pulled off the Myers Park High School campus in front of school Safety Resource Officer Bradley Leak, taken into the woods and orally raped.
According to the student, Leak and Assistant Principal Anthony Perkins were notified of the incident multiple times by other students whom she had messaged to report that she was in danger, but they did not search for her until after the assault had occurred.
In her appeal of a trial ruling that the pair did not act with deliberate indifference when responding to the assault, Doe said that Leak and Perkins withheld evidence from law enforcement, which obstructed her ability to get justice for her sexual assault. Leak and Perkins are protected under immunity, but Doe argues they acted in bad faith and shouldn’t be protected from liability.
Laura Dunn, an attorney representing Jane Doe, said that Perkins selectively presented facts to the Board of Education to make the incident appear consensual, despite physical evidence to the contrary — and in spite of the fact that he was aware that the situation was a kidnapping when went to search for her.
She also said that the defendants failed to properly investigate and preserve video evidence crucial to Doe’s criminal case.
“Perkins in an email to the school one day after the incident said ‘all the evidence is pointing consensual,'" Dunn said. "This is assuredly false. At that time, Assistant Principal Perkins had text messages showing that Q.W. had repeatedly sexually harassed Miss Doe to skip with him for a sexual encounter, both the day before and the day of the incident, over and over.”
Perkins and Leak contended that they remain entitled to public official immunity as they did not show malice, corruption or bad faith.
They also said that Doe has not provided sufficient evidence that Leak and Perkin’s reports characterizing the encounter as consensual prevented Doe from being able to take legal action against her rapist.
“There is no North Carolina case law that says officers who are documenting what they perceived to have happened, even if that is later proved to be incorrect … has somehow obstructed justice,” said Steven Bader, lawyer for the defendants, in court Tuesday.
Perkins’ original report classified the assault as consensual. Leak also submitted a statement to law enforcement saying that Doe skipped class, but did not mention her rape. After Doe’s father took her to the hospital for a rape kit, a police officer didn't collect her statement, seemingly because of Leak’s report, Doe claims in her original lawsuit.
U.S. Circuit Judge Julius Richardson also challenged if the defendants’ initial reports could be considered to be obstruction of justice.
“It’s a little hard for me to see why that is obstruction on its own,” the Donald Trump appointee said. “He’s making a judgment about it, and we may not like the judgment he was making, but it seems like a hard line to suggest that that’s intentionally misleading for the purpose of obstruction."
A civil jury came to a unanimous decision in January 2023 that the assault occurred, but that the school system was not deliberately indifferent in investigating Doe’s reports of sexual assault on the property.
Witnesses then testified that the school had disregarded other reports of sexual assault. The Charlotte Observer reported that the former principal had told students during an assembly that “some people go into the woods and don’t come back happy.”
Doe argued to the panel that the jury had been wrongfully prevented from seeing a record of previous sexual assault investigations purportedly mishandled by Leak. Following the jury decision, U.S. District Judge Robert Conrad Jr. had issued a directed verdict that found there was insufficient evidence to prove the school system was aware of the investigations, and that Leak was retained despite them.
Another former Myers Park High School student, Serena Evans, sued the school board in 2022, claiming that her 2016 rape in a school bathroom was improperly handled by administration. The case was settled for $50,000 in spring 2023.
In Doe's lawsuit filed in November 2018, she claims that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, Leak and Perkins deliberate indifference to her assault violated Title IX, and that they negligently failed to immediately react to reports that Doe had been abducted.
“We're very hopeful the court will see that Officer Leak and Assistant Principal Perkins have intentionally withheld, destroyed and misled officials regarding evidence available of the kidnapping and oral rape of Miss Doe, so that she can have an opportunity to see them in court,” said Dunn in an interview following the hearing. “It's obviously been a long road, it's almost been nine years as of this coming November, and I'm really hopeful that this will be an opportunity for her to have justice.”
Richardson was joined on the panel by U.S. Circuit Senior Judge Barbara Milano Keenan, a Barack Obama appointee, and U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Dillon, sitting in by appointment from Virginia.
Lawyers for the defendants did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
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