Garfield High School Rape Cases Update

Folks, the terrible scandal coming out from Garfield High School about the girl who was repeatedly raped at different times by two different basketball coaches starting in 2017 gets more terrible by the day.

I am going to put up the latest news on it but I am trying to create a timeline and a good, factual and complete narrative on this story.  I first need the SPS investigation report. I did ask SPS public disclosure for it but when I can get it is unknown.

The Times and KUOW have stuck with the story and here are their updates.

The Times:

- A lawsuit has been filed naming Seattle Schools and, apparently, Board director Michelle Sarju. I have not seen the filing yet. The details are horrifying and the manipulation of this girl by two predators made my blood run cold.

“At every turn, SPS failed in its most fundamental and basic duties and permitted one of its own special needs students to become the victim of extreme sexual exploitation by multiple authority figures at the school, while bereft of any protection or intervention whatsoever,” reads the complaint. “The consequences of these horrific acts and of Defendant SPS’s failure to protect [the former student] will affect her for the rest of her life.”

- According to a SPD investigation cited in the lawsuit, other employees at SPS found some of Jones’ behavior inappropriate but didn’t know about the sexual assaults. The district’s athletic director also knew that Jones was working as a coach despite not being approved to do so, the complaint states.

- After Hall’s alleged abuse was disclosed in 2022, parents of players on the basketball team began informing district officials of other concerns about Hall’s behavior, according to the complaint. SPS conducted an investigation, which revealed that school board member Michelle Sarju told the district’s then interim superintendent of HR about some inappropriate behavior between Hall and other students.

And who was that interim superintendent? Sarah Pritchett. I am going to veer off here to say that SPS has treated HR and its leadership as an after-thought for years. They have had former principals (Pritchett is one of them) and a lawyer (Noel Treat who had worked in SPS Legal previously) and even Superintendent Brent Jones headed it at one time.

- The issue of Sarju and her daughter, Nyasha, is a bit murky as to who talked to this girl and who they each talked to after that.

KUOW

This reporting - from Ann Dornfeld, states that one of the coaches - Walter Junior Jones - has violated orders to stay away from schools and attended several Seattle Schools high school events.

Under Jones' electronic home monitoring agreement, he was barred from contact with minors but allowed to leave home from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily to work for his girlfriend’s dietary supplement business.

Seattle Public Schools officials notified county detention staff that Jones was seen at at least 13 high school sporting events between December and February, including at Garfield, Chief Sealth International, Ballard, Ingraham and Bellevue High Schools, and Eastside Catholic School. Detention staff told the court Jones was on a work pass at the time of the events, and ankle monitor GPS location records filed with the court confirmed that he was at the schools during the events.

Ankle monitor location records also placed Jones at Garfield High School or the neighboring Garfield Teen Life Center eight additional times in that two-month period.

Dornfeld asked SPS for a comment and SPS didn't answer back. I find that odd because you'd think they would want to be clear that THEY had reported this.

In a hearing, Judge Melinda Young found that Jones’ attendance at the school sporting events was a violation of his electronic home monitoring conditions, and approved prosecutors’ request to restrict his 20-hour daily work pass.

“I’ve never seen an [electronic home monitoring] pass like this,” Young said. “It does, quite frankly, render EHM somewhat meaningless.

Young limited Jones’ work pass to end at 10 p.m. and indicated that he is not to be at youth sporting events. She reiterated that Jones is allowed no contact with minors — including Jones’ girlfriend’s 16-year-old daughter —except his son. 

 

The father of the girl that lives with Jones says:

“It’s crazy to hear a judge re-stipulate that he’s not allowed to be around my 16-year-old daughter when he’s already been living with her," Miller said. "No child should live in fear inside their own home nor have to lock their bedroom door day and night, as she’s consistently been doing.”

I venture to say that the district will have a HUGE payout to this young woman and rightly so. I doubt it will go to trial but I wish it would. SPS's dirty laundry needs the hot spotlight of daylight.

That payout will then be followed by the one for the murder victim's family from Ingraham High School and then the one for the murder victim's family from Garfield High School.

Again, if you do not change the culture of a bureaucracy, you change nothing. JSCEE is a sick, sick place.