A black former Baraboo administrative district student alleges the district routinely ignored complaints by her and her mother about racist taunts, racially motivated physical assaults, harassment, and sexual abuse, all of which the lawsuit says the district did nothing to prevent.
In a 30-page lawsuit filed in court within the capital of Madison on Wednesday, the 17-year-old girl and her mother accuse the Baraboo administrative district of showing “deliberate indifference” to the alleged abuse by district students and staff, the Wisconsin State Journal first reported.
The lawsuit alleges the district was aware that a specific student, identified only by his initials, had sexually harassed and assaulted female students, including the girl, but took no action. During the 2017-18 academic year, the lawsuit states, the boy repeatedly sexually assaulted the girl in school. The alleged sex assaults included inappropriate touching, groping, and exposure. “Officials at the district never took any meaningful action in response to the reports of racism,” the complaint states, further accusing the district of violating laws meant to guard students from discrimination and harassment. “Most of the time, there was no reaction in the least .”
The student, Dasia Banks, said her bullying within the district began within the class, and it needs to the purpose where she felt there was no use in speaking up until now.
“I want to be the one controlling my story,” the previous Baraboo high school student told The Daily Beast during a recent interview.
The allegations come to touch over a year after several students at the tiny town highschool were pictured giving the Nazi salute — an event district leaders said wasn’t “reflective of the tutorial values [and] beliefs of the varsity District of Baraboo.” The teen’s complaint argues otherwise, painting the varsity as a pit of racism, bullying, and assault.
The Baraboo community, located a touch over an hour outside Madison, boasts a population of just over 12,000 and is predominately white. Not much is different at the local high school where the scholar body is 87 percent white, while but 1 percent of scholars are Black.
Among the incidents cited within the lawsuit, Banks claims she was sexually assaulted on multiples occasions by a boy at Baraboo High, who district leaders were reportedly aware had assaulted other female students. The alleged abuse during the 2017-18 academic year and included inappropriate touching, groping, and exposure, consistent with the complaint.
That same year, the teenager says another boy within the school hallway physically assaulted her. He would only get each day of in-school suspension, instead of the specified punishment for bullying of a one- to three-day out-of-school suspension.
The plaintiff, who was a sophomore at the time, also recalled overhearing a classmate ask a lover, “Is it a hate crime if I slap a Black girl?” In another instance, Banks alleges someone slipped an anonymous letter in her school locker, calling her an “n—-r” and a “slut.” She would transfer from Baraboo High to a different institution in the subsequent academic year.
“Every time a problem occurred, II might go and tell a principal,” Banks told local outlet Channel 3000. “I would tell them what happened and that they told me that they might handle it. But it continued to happen, so I felt as if they weren’t doing anything.”
The teen’s mother, Megan Ray, said the harassment has been happening for years, and it’s time the district does something to deal with it.
“I watched her go from this amazing, compassionate girl, and she or he just quite turned hard,” Ray said, adding: “Her heart has been hardened. She doesn’t believe anybody anymore. Now, she possesses her voice back. And she’s able to use it permanently .”
Ray, a former Baraboo administrative district employee, noted that she too was subjected to racial abuse, including being called the N-word by students. Consistent with her LinkedIn profile, she was an education assistant and an assistant coach for the varsity girls’ five at Baraboo HS before resigning in 2018.
Ray said her complaints about the harassment fell on deaf ears, prompting her to quit amid exhaustion over the district’s “failure to either address or end its racially hostile educational environment,” the lawsuit states.
Tim Heilman, a Baraboo board of education member, told the State Journal that the board has “very, little or no information” regarding the accusations. Ray and her daughter are standing by their claims and hope their lawsuit will change things.
“We don’t want this to happen to other families,” she told The Daily Beast.
The family’s lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary compensation from the district for “all economic and emotional losses” they’ve suffered over a previous couple of years.
