Dianah, a 15-year-old girl South Carolina girl reported that a school resource officer sexually assaulted her in his office on a school day. Deputy Jamel Bradley, 38, had been the subject of at least five complaints in his nine years at Spring Valley High School. Parents, fellow deputies, an administrator and a coach had all raised concerns that Bradley was acting inappropriately with teenage girls. Richland County Sheriff's Capt. Heidi Jackson believed her story, but some people on the force, Jackson said, “did not want to see this side” of the school resource officer. Sheriff Leon Lott had personally recruited Bradley, a former star basketball player at the University of South Carolina, placing him at an elementary school before he’d graduated from the police academy. Even while being monitored by federal authorities, Richland County officials dismissed or failed to investigate complaints of sexual misconduct against Bradley, reports the Washington Post. The sheriff’s department and Richland County School District Two denied mishandling Dianah’s complaint and failing to protect her and other students from Bradley.
Across the U.S., the presence of more than 20,000 local police officers and sheriff’s deputies in schools has been welcomed by parents fearful of mass shootings and other safety threats, and protested by those concerned about excessive force and the arrests of kids. Largely ignored has been the risk of sexual abuse of children by officers. A Post investigation has found that predatory school police officers have used their positions to meet, groom and exploit students, while the Justice Department and many law enforcement agencies and school systems have failed to take steps to prevent sexual misconduct and root out abusive cops. The Post identified more than 200 elementary, middle and high school police officers charged with crimes involving child sexual abuse from 2005 through 2022. Some of these officers had faced complaints of flirting, texting or touching students — reports that were often downplayed by supervisors as little more than a cop working to earn a student’s trust. John McDonald, a school safety expert, has never seen a policy or training aimed at stopping sexual abuse by school police officers. “It’s time to make this an industry-wide standard. There is no excuse not to,” McDonald said. “If we don’t, we’re going to find ourselves in a position where we’re looking back at it like the Catholic Church did during its sexual abuse scandal.”
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