The family of a 13-year-old girl who says she was sexually assaulted by two boys for nearly 20 minutes on a Hillsboro school bus has filed a $700,000 lawsuit against the district and driver.
The suit, filed Oct. 4 in Washington County Circuit Court, accuses the Hillsboro School District of failing to protect the girl, who was not identified, and of failing to adequately train its employees to intervene.
The suit also alleges the bus driver, who is referred to as Jane Doe in court documents, broke several Oregon administrative rules when she did not intervene to stop the attack.
The school district declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
Court documents allege the girl was riding the bus home from school on March 18, 2019, when a boy began trying to slap and touch her buttocks after she stood up to adjust her clothes.
As she was trying to push and kick him away, a second boy got on the bus and joined in the assault, the suit alleges. Over about the next 20 minutes, the boys held the girl down, groped her breasts and vagina and slapped her buttocks, the suit alleges, as she told them to “stop” and “get off me” more than 20 times.
One of the boys had the girl in a headlock at one point during the assault, the suit alleges.
The entirety of the assault was captured on video, according to the lawsuit, and only ended when the bus arrived at a high school. After the incident, one of the boys told a Hillsboro police officer that kind of behavior was “common” on the bus, the suit alleges.
The bus driver was the only adult on the bus and did nothing to intervene throughout the ordeal, despite the girl’s loud attempts to get the boys to stop assaulting her, the lawsuit alleges. Another student told police about the incident but did not inform the bus driver, according to the lawsuit.
The girl suffered a host of physical and mental injuries after the attack, the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit marks the second time in recent days that the Hillsboro School District has been named as a defendant in a court action alleging negligence. The family of a 14-year-old girl who drowned during a Hillsboro school swim team practice in 2019 named the district as one of several defendants in a suit filed Oct. 5 that seeks up to $70 million.
