Welcome to the inaugural episode of “Searchlight New Mexico with Ed Williams,” a monthly podcast that takes a deep look at critical issues impacting New Mexicans.
Last year, President Trump signed an executive order aimed at dismantling the U.S. Department of Education. Today, staffing cuts have hollowed out nearly half of the department’s workforce — including at the Office of Civil Rights, which oversees federal protections against sexual assault in schools.
As federal oversight is scaled back, students and parents in some states are turning to state- and local-level protections. Often those protections are more robust than those provided by Title IX, the federal student civil rights law administered by the Department of Education.
But in states like New Mexico — where little or no state-level protections exist — students have few options when a school mishandles a report of sexual violence on campus.
A recent investigation by Searchlight brings this gap into clear focus.
In April, a student named Larissa told administrators at her middle school in Hobbs that she was raped on campus as at least one onlooker filmed on their phone. Both the alleged assault and the video should have triggered Title IX investigations, according to experts. School officials disagreed.
Instead, the school wrote up Larissa for violating the student code of conduct and assigned her three days of on-campus suspension. She was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and is now being homeschooled.
Larissa’s case was one of 47 instances of rape, sexual assault, or sharing of explicit images of students reported to police from Hobbs schools over the past three school years, according to police dispatch records. Hobbs is not unique — rates of rape and sexual assault in New Mexico are 40 percent higher than the national average. Students in many of the state’s school districts have reported elevated levels of sexual violence.
On this episode of “Searchlight New Mexico with Ed Williams,” Sabrina Bernadel of the National Center for Youth Law discusses the state of civil rights for today’s students. And Susan Moen, a Title IX advocate and advisor to Stop Sexual Assault in Schools who has worked with students and parents for more than two decades, unpacks the federal and local processes for reporting and investigating sexual assault in schools.
Watch this episode on YouTube or click here to listen.
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Resources
Several organizations offer resources to help students and parents understand their rights, navigate the complaint process, and advocate for stronger protections against sexual assault in school.
Stop Sexual Assault In Schools, a nonprofit advocacy organization founded by parents with lived experience in school-based sexual violence, has extensive resources on student rights and recourses in the aftermath of sexual assault on campus.
The National Center for Youth Law has an extensive resource library, including resources for understanding and navigating sexual assault at school. Their model legislation for protecting students from discrimination and sexual violence can be found here.
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