Special Needs Teen Used at Bait to Catch Rapist
BERMAN: We have a story right now that might very well shock you. A lawsuit says a 14-year-old special needs girl was used as bait to try to catch an alleged school rapist and she ended up being raped herself. Let's see if you can follow this. The suit says a teacher's aide encouraged her to meet a 16-year-old boy in a bathroom where teachers would intervene in a sting, but it all went wrong when the boy asked to meet in a different bathroom than the one that was expected, and that's when the alleged rape occurred. No one stopped it. No one was there to stop it. Now the federal government is supporting the girl's family in a suit against the school board in the Alabama county where this all happened. Joining me now to discuss this is Wendy Murphy, a former prosecutor and law professor at New England School of law in Boston. I want to break this down piece by piece. If this went down as the suit alleges how risky would bit for a school official to try to set up some kind of sting with no law enforcement participation at all? Have you ever heard of anything like this?</s>WENDY MURPHY, LAW PROFESSOR, NEW ENGLAND SCHOOL OF LAW & FORMER PROSECUTOR: No. No, John. And you know using the word "risky," I really want to use such strong language, and I think you'll probably be fined if I do that. It's not just that it's risky to this poor girl. It's risky to the school in terms of liability. And, make no mistake, they will pay dearly, dearly for what they did. It is absurd. It is not remotely the correct way to respond to concerns about a repeat offender on campus, whether you're in middle school, high school or college, it's all the same. Title IX covers this is kind of behavior. Schools are required to be pro active, but under no definition of pro active, are they required to set up a sting. This is so silly. It's crazy.</s>BERMAN: The local district attorney investigated this incident, didn't pursue the rape claim after the victim was unwilling or unable to discuss it? Is that a separate issue than in the idea of this alleged sting?</s>MURPHY: It is a separate question to some extent. Holding prosecutors accountable for responding correctly to rape on campus requires a different approach, both legally and politically, than holding schools accountable when they do the wrong thing. Remember, we're talking about a civil rights violation when it happens on campus. But in the real world, the very same incident is a crime and they are treated in very different ways and venues, but they are both critically important and both should proceed. What I don't like about this story is it appears both in the real world legal system and on campus, officials were looking for videotape proof of the incident. I think the NFL knows better than to do that ever again and I hope this case sends a very different message. You don't need proof.</s>BERMAN: No.</s>MURPHY: The word of a girl or a woman is sufficient to require responsible authorities to proceed.</s>BERMAN: You made up a good point I didn't make clear before. This girl had come forward and said that she had been approached by this boy. She was nervous about it, which is why then, allegedly, the school set up this sting to catch him in the act. Because the school said they didn't have enough to go after him unless they caught him in the act of a rape. That does seem outrageous.</s>MURPHY: That's where the school is wrong. And this young man apparently had multiple prior offenses. So you don't have to have 14 different girls come forward before you do something, and you certainly don't have to then prove it with yet another girl before you step up and take effective action. I actually wrote the first article in the nation on this issue connecting the dots between Title IX and sexual assault on campus, and shockingly, at the time I wrote the article, which was in 2006, very few schools had anything in place to deal with the problem of sexual harassment and assault on campus. As a result of which you do have situations like this, where schools do nothing until something extreme happens, and then they do it wrong.</s>BERMAN: We've got a whole lot of questions about this one. Wendy Murphy, thank you for joining us. Our Victor Blackwell is in Alabama digging more into this. What we've heard so far raises so many questions. Here's how the school board is it responding. "School officials are confident the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals will rule in favor of the board and the administrators. Our attorneys recommend that we not discuss ongoing litigation". Much more on this ahead. Ahead @THISHOUR, the former first family talking about world problems at the Clinton Global Initiative. But is it world problems that the political world is thinking about while they look at this picture, and could the big news be about a baby? That's next.