When parents send their kids to school, they entrust teachers and principals with the safety of those most precious to them. So, when school staff willfully or recklessly violate that trust, they must be held accountable.
Last week, we connected with Kerri and Luis Rivera, the Christian parents of a 9-year-old student at Rochester Memorial elementary school. Their daughter is a shy and polite 3rd-Grade student there. But they were shocked when their daughter recently came home visibly upset about what happened in school that day. She explained that she had been using the girls’ restroom when a boy in her class who identified as transgender came into the bathroom. It was bad enough that a boy would be allowed to use the girl’s bathroom at all, but what happened next was much worse. The boy saw her feet under the stall and said “who’s feet are those?” When she didn’t answer, he peered through the crack in the door and opened the door to look at her while she was in the toilet stall. Deeply embarrassed and upset, she returned to class crying.
This wasn’t the first time this male student had used the girls’ bathroom, and it wasn’t the first time the school had received complaints about it. In fact, Kerri had called the principal three times to complain about the student before this incident and was assured that boys would not be allowed into the girls’ bathroom going forward. Another parent had apparently even complained about this same boy peering under the stall at their daughter, too. But when the Riveras reported the incident to the principal, she changed her tune. Now, she claimed, the school was legally required to allow this boy into the girls’ bathroom, because Massachusetts law prohibits discrimination based on gender identity. If the Riveras’ daughter felt uncomfortable, she could go and use a single-occupancy bathroom – not the boy. The school shifted the burden from the perpetrator onto the victim.
Listen to Luis Rivera’s account of what happened to the Rochester School Committee below:
No 9-year-old girl should have her privacy and dignity violated because her school wants to promote a radical transgender ideology. When we heard from the Riveras about how their daughter’s rights had been infringed, we immediately drafted a sexual harassment complaint and demand letter to Old Rochester Regional School District. In our letter, we demanded that the school conduct a thorough investigation into this incident, discipline the offending student, and prohibit him and all other male students from using the girls’ bathroom. We explained the Trump administration’s recent actions under Title IX against schools that have similar policies. And we put them on notice that we had filed a federal Title IX complaint with the Office of Civil Rights. You can read our letter below.
We will keep you informed as this story develops. The Riveras are just one of many families in Massachusetts whose daughters have had their privacy, dignity, safety, or fairness compromised in the name of progressive ideology. Enough is enough. We’re standing up and doing everything that we can to protect all of our daughters at school. Would you join us?
