Student grabbed buttocks, school sought expulsion

The father of a 13-year-old middle-school student is suing San Diego Unified School District and the vice principal of Wangenheim Middle School for threatening his son with a year’s suspension for grabbing a fellow student's buttocks at a neighborhood park after school hours.

The complaint, filed in federal court on behalf of Carlos Mann, accuses Wangenheim vice principal Darius Ashton of targeting his son after a series of minor disciplinary incidents and using the alleged case of sexual battery as the reason to expel him from Wangenheim.

San Diego Unified, claims the lawsuit, is complicit in that it failed to train and neglected to supervise a vice principal by requesting expulsion and for forcing the accused student of submitting a statement without parental consent. The accusations against the student compelled Mann to transfer his son to a neighboring school district.

Incident

On January 6, 2016, Mann's son approached a female student that he knew and asked for a hug. The girl, with whom he had exchanged several messages through social media, told the boy to get off of her. He hugged her anyway and grabbed her buttocks in the process.

On January 25, without his father's consent, the boy was asked to submit a "student statement" about the incident. He denied grabbing her on any previous occasion but did admit to grabbing her buttocks at the park nine days earlier. He said she got mad and he texted her an apology and told her he "would never do it again."

The following day, vice principal Ashton completed a "recommendation for expulsion" form, stating it was the second known incident between the two students. In her report, Ashton mentioned 19 "log entries for student support" for the boy due to misbehavior in class and confrontations with a shop teacher.

Two weeks later, district officials held an expulsion hearing for the boy. The panel chose against expelling the boy. By that point, however, Mann claims he feared Ashton would seek vengeance against him and his son. On February 27 he pulled his son out of San Diego Unified and enrolled him at a school in the Sweetwater School District.

Aftermath

Ashton's alleged vendetta against his son created stress at home and caused Mann to miss a military-sponsored substance-abuse program that he was scheduled to attend.

"Without any serious misconduct on the part of [Mann's son] and without good, just or legitimate cause, defendants not only breached the implied covenant to act in good faith and fair dealing by engaging in conduct separate and apart from the performance of obligations under the San Diego Unified School District's guideline, without good faith and in contravention of the implied writings not to recommend expulsion of any student," reads the lawsuit.

Besides forcing a minor to provide a statement absent of any parental consent, Mann's attorney claims that Ashton alerted state officials before holding a hearing, violating his 14th Amendment rights and resulting in Mann becoming "more outraged with the Defendants dealing with his son's matter."

San Diego Unified's past on sexual assaults

Mann's lawsuit comes less than six months after a former investigator for San Diego Unified sued the district for firing him after discovering that a former principal at Green Elementary had failed to report an act on a spate of sexual assaults inside a school bathroom.

That lawsuit, filed on behalf of Michael Gurrieri, put the onus on school district officials for inaction and for allegedly attempting to cover up previous reports of sexual harassment at the elementary school.

Both cases are making their way through state and federal courts.