Ohio girl with learning disability, 9, may have been sexually assaulted by another student on school bus

From The Cincinnati Enquirer:

EAST PRICE HILL, Ohio – For two days, a mother unknowingly sent her 9-year-old learning disabled daughter off to school on the same bus with a teenage boy who allegedly sexually assaulted her.

A 13-year-old student has now been removed from his school after allegations of the rape on the school bus have surfaced, though the investigation and other details are murky.

“This is a very troubling allegation, very disturbing,” said Janet Walsh, a Cincinnati Public Schools spokeswoman.

Also troubling is the timeline of events and the allegation that the bus driver may witnessed the sex act and did not stop it.

“It is sick to me,” the mother said.

The 9-year-old apparently never told her mother what happened, and the school, Roberts Paideia Academy, didn’t notify the mother until Thursday, at least two days after the alleged attack took place. The girl said she didn’t initially tell her mother what happened because she was afraid she would get in trouble.

The girl later told her mother that the teen approached her before she got on the bus and said he wanted to kiss her, among other things, and that if she wasn’t going to willingly participate, that he would rape her. The girl said that she had been sitting on the bus with a female friend on the ride home from school and when the friend got off at her stop, the teen scooted over into her seat.

From there, he kissed her, began fondling and forced her to have oral sex with him, the mother said. When it came time for the girl to get off at her stop, she told her mother that she stopped as she was getting off and asked the bus driver if he saw what had just happened.

“He said he was going to write her up,” the girl’s mother said. The girl said she then ran home.

The Enquirer is not naming the mother in order to protect the identity of the girl. The girl has not been in school since the mother learned of the alleged incident. Her mother said she plans to return to the school today to see if her daughter can be transferred.

She is angry that the driver would suggest to her daughter that she could be in trouble.