The San Bernardino City Unified School District will reinvestigate the alleged rape of an 11-year-old girl in a restroom stall at Cesar E. Chavez Middle School at the request of an advocate for the alleged victim and her mother.
The assault, which occurred on Oct. 11, 2022, was recorded on video by another student, shared with other students and posted online. It triggered an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights at the request of Steven Figueroa, the advocate for the girl and her mother.
In a Jan. 9 email, Robert Arellano, who was appointed the district’s Title IX coordinator on Dec. 20, informed Figueroa of the new investigation into the alleged rape and the district’s failure to provide the girl’s mother, a non-English speaker, with the proper resources to file a complaint in Spanish.
Arellano said the district will “discontinue the current Title IX investigation and initiate a new Title IX process.”
“In response to your concerns and to ensure a thorough and impartial investigation, the district will be engaging an independent investigator to conduct each of the investigations related to the complaints,” Arellano said in the email. “A new independent investigator will be appointed to ensure that these investigations are conducted in a fair and unbiased manner, consistent with all legal and procedural requirements.”
In a 14-page report issued on Nov. 25, 2024, the OCR concluded that administrators at Cesar E. Chavez Middle School and the San Bernardino City Unified School District were “deliberately indifferent” to the mother’s report of her daughter’s sexual assault and did not follow federal Title IX regulations in investigating complaints of the attack.
Title IX was enacted in 1972 to protect individuals from sex-based discrimination, including sexual assault. Title VI, which the OCR also found had been violated by the district, prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin.
In response to the OCR’s findings, the district in November adopted a resolution providing guidance to district employees and contractors on what they must do if they witness or otherwise learn of sex-based harassment of a student by another student, to whom it should be reported and who is responsible for investigating, among other things.
School district spokesperson MaryRone Goodwin said that although the district’s internal investigators are thoroughly trained, impartial and capable, the district decided to proceed with an independent investigation to avoid any appearance of bias.
The decision to reinvestigate, Goodwin said, was an independent decision by the district in response to Figueroa’s request, and not based on any directive or recommendation by the OCR.
Gary Dordick, a lawyer representing the alleged victim and her mother in a lawsuit filed in September 2023, did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
