Alleged Rapes Show How Failed Oversight Endangers Florida's Most Vulnerable Children
Shortly after 8:30 p.m. on March 3, 2011, 16-year-old Susan Jackson returned to the Vanguard School in Lake Wales after a trip to Starbucks with a classmate. The girls' dorm monitor, Kami Land, had driven them in her car to the coffee shop and then dropped them off near Boyd Hall, their dorm at the center of campus. They were supposed to be in bed soon. Curfew at the private Florida boarding school for kids with learning disabilities was 10 p.m.
Illustration by Larissa Kulik
Instead of heading to her room, however, Susan walked away from the main cluster of buildings and toward the gym, the athletic field, and the woods that ringed a lake on the south end of campus, which is just south of Orlando. During the day, students played tennis, soccer, golf, and paintball on the grounds or canoed on the pristine water. At night, however, the campus' remote areas became popular spots for students looking to hook up or do drugs.
Therefore, they were off-limits to Susan unless a staff member accompanied her. Already, in January, she had been hospitalized after smoking marijuana laced with methamphetamine that she and a friend had bought off-campus. Following that incident, the school had promised Susan's parents it would monitor her more closely -- and even imposed a strict 9:30 curfew. Her mother demanded constant adult supervision of her daughter. "Susan is a follower and will not make the correct choice on her own," she warned.
When Susan failed to return by her curfew, a security guard went looking for her. He eventually found her -- distraught, frightened, and disoriented -- behind the school's greenhouse near the woods and took her back to the dorm.
"She was upset and very scared," recalled Ellen, a student who lived across the hall from Susan. "Her hair was messed up. She had mascara on her face, and it was obvious that she had been crying.
"I asked her, I said, 'Are you OK?' And she said, 'I was raped.'"
The details emerged gradually that night and the next day: Two male students had tricked Susan into walking with them into the woods on school grounds, the 16-year-old reported. Then they forced her to her knees and made her give one of them oral sex.
Nobody working at the school -- or in local law enforcement or at the state Department of Children and Families (DCF) -- adequately followed up on claims by Susan or several other victims of alleged crimes like assault at Vanguard. (New Times is withholding the real names of all juveniles in this story.) For instance, Det. Mary Jerome of the Lake Wales Police Department allowed the school's president to help in questioning the suspects, which is not common practice. And cops closed the case the same day the rape was reported without obtaining any evidence supporting the suspects' alibis.
Perhaps just as alarming, New Times has reviewed a 21-page list of 911 calls from the Vanguard School to the county's emergency call center between November 2010 and September 2014, plus a list of the far fewer service calls and even fewer arrests by Lake Wales cops. They indicate dozens of phoned-in emergencies, including at least a dozen assault cases and other violent disturbances -- and some attempted suicides.
It also seems incidents are sometimes neither reported nor logged. For instance, on January 17, 2013, according to former teacher Gail Bonnichsen, a teenage girl was allegedly assaulted on the grounds by a student who jammed his hand inside her, causing vaginal bleeding. But staff on duty that night brushed aside the girl's concerns and didn't call police or seek medical help -- until the girl told Bonnichsen about it late the next day. Bonnichsen claims she called a DCF abuse hotline and two local police departments, but the agencies never responded. "Nothing was done about it, and nobody gave a crap," Bonnichsen says.
The 48-year-old school caters primarily to children and teens with learning disabilities who may also have developmental problems. But over time, it has increasingly become a haven -- or "dumping ground," as one disgruntled parent calls it -- for generally affluent disturbed and violent youths. Even so, Vanguard's website promises that its "safe, supportive environment facilitates physical, social, and emotional growth of all students" and that its "dormitories are a home-away-from-home for [its] residential students."
In a 2011 reply to a lawsuit filed by Susan's family, the school's attorneys denied negligence. They also charged that Susan and her family were partially to blame for any harm to Susan by acting "negligently and carelessly" themselves. Despite repeated email and phone inquiries from New Times, school officials, including President Cathy Wooley-Brown, have declined to answer any broader questions about student safety and the alleged failure to properly report crimes. Polk County-based attorney Richard Straughn, who represents the school, wrote, "The health, safety, and well-being of students are top priorities at the Vanguard School... Part of our commitment includes complete respect for the confidentiality and privacy rights of our students and families."
The allegations of trouble at Vanguard are mirrored at comparable facilities across the country. Private schools and residential programs for youngsters with an array of issues are part of a multibillion-dollar industry. It includes thousands of facilities -- from boarding schools to wilderness camps to juvenile detention centers -- that house nearly 200,000 kids. They have not only learning disabilities but also emotional, behavioral, and addiction problems. Vanguard, though, doesn't employ the notorious tough-love approach common in many other teen residential programs. Tough-love tactics include sadistic punishments and harsh encounter-style groups designed to break troublemaking kids physically and emotionally.
The failed enforcement by local and state authorities is also shaped by some of the same forces driving the emerging scandal nearly 300 miles northwest at Florida State University in Tallahassee. There, recent investigations by the New York Times and other news outlets found an insufficient response to rape allegations against Heisman Trophy winner Jameis Winston and other football players.
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