Jane Doe, a Muncie mother, has filed a complaint against Ball State University for mishandling a case involving sexual activity among students that led to her son being bullied and referred to as a child molester.
The complaint was filed after the university investigated a sexual activity involving students at Burris Laboratory School on the university's campus two years ago.
Doe alleges that her son was one of several boys younger than 10 years old who were frequently left unattended at the school, where Ball State students worked as student teachers. This eventually led to easy access to pornographic materials on school computers.
"(The students had) unrestricted access to YouTube, the internet, the iPads, the laptops, school computers, to look at whatever they wanted," said the mother's attorney, Thomas Blessing.
The complaint says that after the boys finished watching pornographic videos and animated games, they would reproduce the sexual activity either in the school library or in an unsupervised classroom. They are also alleged to have performed oral sex on each other in a bathroom at the school.
"Usually we worry about kids saying things that they may have heard on TV or in a movie," Blessing said. "Well, these boys were reenacting things that they saw."
In late 2011, Doe said that her son was falsely accused as the provocateur of the sexual activity at the end of the investigation. The conclusion resulted in numerous intimidations and her son being called a child molester by some parents in the community
This incident forced her to admit her son in a different school. As a result, Doe is seeking monetary damages among other things.
"She wants people to be held accountable," Blessing said. "Whether it's the teacher, the aides in that classroom, other teachers at Burris School, all need to understand that they have a very serious responsibility to supervise these kids."
