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During the 2011-2012 school year, school administrators and staff members allegedly covered up the sexual assault, harassment and rape of a 12-year-old girl, identified in court as “Kate,” at Rachel Carson Middle School in Herndon. It’s been
learned that five of them continue to work in Fairfax County Public Schools, even after a disturbing school district response to the alleged assault, including telling the student to “be a big girl” and accusing her of having “a part” in the
abuse, according to documents obtained by the Fairfax County Times.

Typically, the victims of sexual assault are able to maintain their anonymity to protect their safety, but in this case, while arguing at one point to throw the case out because of the former student’s anonymity, lawyers at the law firm of Hunton
Andrews Kurth, representing the school district, won the right to have school staffers only identified by their initials in a lawsuit filed by the former student in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria.

However, a document, docket entry No. 82, filed on Feb 14, 2020, lists the staffers’ names publicly, identifying nine staffers or former staffers of Fairfax County Public Schools as defendants. They include five staff members still working at Fairfax
County Public Schools, according to public records: former Rachel Carson Middle School principal August Frattali, now an interim non-school administrator at Luther Jackson Middle School; former Rachel Carson assistant principal Phil Hudson, now an
assistant principal at Frost Middle School; assistant principal Sybil Terry, still at Rachel Carson Middle School; school-based technology specialist Megan Carr, still at Rachel Carson Middle School, and former Rachel Carson counselor Joanne Fraundorfer,
now a counselor at Franklin Middle School.

Another three staffers have retired, according to public records: assistant principal Tamara B. Ballou, counselor Brenda Humphrey and teacher Francis Tarrant. One former Rachel Carson Middle School teacher, Monique Patwary-Faruque, is currently employed
in Albemarle Public Schools in Charlottesville, according to public records. From 2013 through 2023, according to school district records, the school district has spent $18.1 million with the law firm of Hunton Andrews Kurth on cases including this one.

While the allegations of negligence by the school system are more than a decade old, the issue is relevant today to local parents because issues of school safety, from chokings to sexual assault, are an issue of great concern, especially as strategies
like “restorative justice” and “equity” are used to let students avoid punishment or accountability. What’s more, parents say, they want to know about the allegations against specific staff members still overseeing the safety of children.

Fairfax County Public Schools spokeswoman Helen Lloyd didn’t return a request for comment. From 2020 through 2023, after the current school board won election in 2019, the school board has approved some $11.4 million in legal fees to Hunton Williams,
according to school district records.

In the 76-page lawsuit, annotated here with the real names of the defendants, the former Fairfax County student, “Kate,” now 23, alleges that school staffers knew she had experienced increasing threatening sexual harassment at her locker for months
and alleged sexually assault and rape in a secluded area near her bus stop several times, including at knifepoint with threats to kill her and her family if she reported the attacks. The filing described the assault as "consistent with the modus operandi
of human and sexual traffickers in the Fairfax community."

For five months, until “Kate” had to leave school to study safely at home, she alleged that a group of older boys forced her into a closet at school and "repeatedly physically assaulted and battered, sexually assaulted and battered, sexually abused
and raped" her, the suit read.

In an August 2014 decision, the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights reprimanded then-Superintendent Karen Garza for shortcomings with the school’s mishandling of the alleged violations of Title IX, which prohibits sex-based
discrimination at school, and raised issues with a “broader incident of a potentially hostile environment at the School.” The Office of Civil Rights had reviewed a random sample of incidents of disciplinary offenses and found some instances where the
division did not respond in a timely manner under Title IX rules.

According to the complaint, the seventh grader’s life took a dramatic – and violent – turn in October 2011 when she was in seventh grade, visiting the home of a male classmate to visit a pumpkin patch. When the plans fell apart, the classmate “
made unwelcomed sexual advances,” the next day spreading “false rumors'' that “Kate” gave “blow jobs” and “hand jobs.” Soon after, the classmate and others started calling “Kate” names at school, including “slut,” “whore,” “
hoe,” “lesbian” and “bisexual,” sexually harassing, assaulting and touching her.

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“Kate” immediately “attempted to meet with her guidance counselor,” Humphrey, but the counselor “thwarted those attempts by conveying to Plaintiff that she was too busy to see her,” the complaint says.Humphrey retired from Fairfax County
Public Schools after 20 years in 2021, according to a retirement program on the Fairfax County Public Schools website.

“Having been turned away” by the counselor, the complaint states, the young girl “began reporting her harassment to her teachers,” Carr, Patwary-Faruque and Tarrant. They were “among the teachers who knew or should have known” of the sexual
harassment “Kate” allegedly experienced. Carr, who was her homeroom teacher, according to the complaint, is employed as a school-based technology specialist at Rachel Carson according to the school’s website. One time, “Kate” told her homeroom
teacher “she was tardy to class because she was being ‘hurt’ by other students at her locker.”

After students began assaulting her, the complaint alleges, “Kate” “frequently asked” Tarrant “for help opening her locker in an effort to garner adult supervision in hopes that it would deter her harassers and assailants.” Tarrant retired in
2012 after eight years of work at Fairfax County Public Schools, according to a retirement ceremony document. Patwary-Faruque is currently a history and social studies teacher in Albemarle Public Schools in Charlottesville, according to her Facebookpage.

“Kate” then met with Fraundorfer, a Rachel Carson counselor now a counselor at Franklin Middle School in Chantilly, according to the school’s website. “Kate” reported that male students were “bullying and sexually harassing her by calling her
sexually suggestive and derogatory names, and that these students were sexually assaulting and battering her by unwantedly and offensively touching her.” In response to Plaintiff’s reports of sexual harassment, battery, and assault, the counselor
allegedly told “Kate” “that she was simply adapting to middle school.”

After these failed attempts to get help, the complaint alleges, the boys at the school increased their attacks, one time allegedly tackling her at her bus stop, “forcibly removed her clothing,” then “sexually assaulted and sexually battered
Plaintiff by digitally penetrating her vagina,” taking photos of her and threatening to send photos to school classmates. The attacks included forced oral sex, vaginal and anal rape and “death threats against her and her family.”

The main assailant, called C.K. in the complaint, told her he “was grooming her for the enjoyment of his ‘friends,’ that his friends would ‘make a lot of money’ off of her,” the complaint said.

On Nov. 21, 2011, the complaint alleges, “Kate” and her parents met with administrators at the school, including the principal, Frattali, and an assistant principal, Terry, after discovering a sexually explicit voicemail that C.K. had sent their
daughter and the theft of $50 by C.K. from their daughter. In the voicemail, C.K. allegedly said, he was “going to stick my big fat black di** up your ass deep like you like it.”

According to the complaint, assistant principal Terry allegedly told “Kate” and her parents that C.K. “had a very hard life and been in enough trouble” and asked “Kate” and her parents “why they were trying to ruin a young boy’s life.”
Terry is still an assistant principal at Rachel Carson and supervisor for special education and career and technical education, according to the Rachel Carson website.

According to his LinkedIn Account, Frattali worked at Rachel Carson Middle School as a principal from July 2003 to July 2015. According to the official Fairfax County schools website, he is now interim non-school administrator at Jackson Middle School.

The next day, Nov. 22, 2011, the complaint notes, the assistant principal, Terry, met with the parents and “Kate” in her office, “where she reached into her drawer, pulled out fifty dollars ($50.00), and extended her hand with the fifty dollars
towards Plaintiff’s mother while laughing and stating she wanted Plaintiff’s mother to have the money back ‘before she spent it’ on Christmas shopping herself.”

Another assistant principal, Hudson, was in charge of seven grade student conduct and discipline, but the complaint alleges that none of the administrators disciplined the boys harassing “Kate,” including a “mob attack” at her locker, revealing
the school district’s discipline policy was just “a pretense” for “superficial, self-serving investigations” designed to “portray” the school district and school “as a safe environment.”

According to an official school district announcement, Hudson was named assistant principal at Frost Middle School in Fairfax, where school officials said a sexual assault occurred in January but have not provided further details. Fairfax County Police
say they continue to work with the juvenile who filed the complaint and her family.

The harassment continued after the Thanksgiving break, the complaint alleges, with warnings from other students to “Kate” that the student C.K. “has a gun and he is not afraid to kill you.” Around Dec. 14, 2011, the complaint alleges that when “
Kate” told her teacher, Patwary-Faruque, about a male student putting his hands down her pants and sexually harassing her, the teacher told her she needs “to be a big girl” and “deal with the situation yourself.” That month, the complaint
alleges, the student was accosted in the school and raped in a closet by three unknown males.

On Jan. 27, 2012, with the assault and harassment continuing, the complaint says, “Kate” went to her principal, Frattali, in tears and he told her he did “not know what to do.” By February 8, 2012, students admitted to an assistant principal,
Ballou, that “Kate” was smeared as a “douche, a bitch, a slut and a whore,” the complaint notes. Ballou admitted to the mother that her daughter had been getting death threats but dismissed them as what “kids say,” the complaint alleges.
Ballou was named interim principal at Dogwood Elementary School in 2012 according to a news report, and retired in 2016, according to a document on the Fairfax County Public Schools website.

On Feb. 10, 2012, the principal, Frattali, told the mother in an email that her daughter “had a part” in the abuse. The mother forwarded the email to the school district superintendent, Jack Dale, who has since left, and assistant superintendent
Fabio Zuluaga, who is still with the school district in the same position.

Soon after, following medical advice, the student’s parents pulled her from school to study at home.

The Fairfax County Police Department officer, detective Fred Chambers, investigating the case of the alleged rape had previously worked closely with the principal as a school resource officer, or “S.R.O.,” resulting in a coverup, according to the
complaint. On June 29, 2012, Zuluaga sent the girl’s mother a letter telling school officials the “incidents of harassment, inappropriate touching and other bullying could not be verified.” However, the complaint says, the police sent “Kate” to
a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner, whose findings “revealed she suffered contusions inside her anus thereby corroborating her report of rape and sodomy.”

The case has a pre-trial hearing on April 19 and is expected to go to trial this spring.

https://www.fairfaxtimes.com/articles/fairfax_county/five-staffers-in-alleged-rape-cover-up-still-work-at-fairfax-county-public-schools/article_34d05002-c8b9-11ed-ab9a-b7964c6d3648.html

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