$50M tort claim: Boy victim of ‘several’ sexual assaults in Boise school
The mother of a student at a Boise elementary school filed a $50 million claim against the Boise School District after her son was allegedly sexually assaulted “several times” by classmates.
In the tort claim, filed Aug. 4 and obtained by the Idaho Statesman, the Boise mother accused school district and Hillcrest Elementary School personnel of failing to protect her son, including by ceasing supervision of a bathroom where one of the alleged assaults took place.
Tort claims are required by law before someone can sue a state or local government entity. They must be filed within 180 days of the incident.
The Boise School District has been the recipient of several high-profile tort claims in recent months, with seven of them involving a former employee who was accused of possessing child pornography and of sex crimes, and took his own life when police were trying to arrest him.
The Aug. 4 claim alleges that a student at Hillcrest Elementary was assaulted by third-grade classmates during the 2023-24 school year. The student did not disclose the alleged incidents until June, after one of the perpetrators left the school district, according to the claim. That classmate was believed to be “known to the school and the school resource officer” as “a trouble maker,” the claim said.
At least one of these incidents allegedly occurred in a bathroom on school property that “used to always have” teacher or school-resource officer supervision, the claim said, but the district “chose to stop supervising this restroom.”
The mother contacted several Hillcrest Elementary personnel after her son reported the incidents to her and did not receive a response for 24 hours, the claim said.
The legal complaint, filed on her behalf by Boise attorneys Andrea Rosholt and Eric Rossman, argued that the school district allowed the assaults to occur by failing to adequately supervise the bathroom and by acting negligently with regards to past conduct by the alleged perpetrators.
It also accused school and district personnel of not reporting the alleged assaults to law enforcement or the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare in a timely manner, as mandated under Idaho law. This violated the student’s due process rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments, the claim argued.
The Statesman reached out to the school district, the Boise Police Department and Rosholt for comment, but has not received any responses.
Idaho News 6 earlier reported on the tort claim, and a spokesperson for the school district provided KIVI-TV with a statement:
“While we will not discuss pending litigation at this time, we want to reassure our families that the safety and well-being of our students and staff remain our highest priority. We are committed to transparency and will continue to uphold the standards our community expects from us.”
Reporter Alex Brizee contributed.
