Students, parents struggle to fathom school sex incident
FORT MYERS, Fla. — Misinformation is swirling after an incident last week in which more than a dozen males had sex with a 15-year-old girl in a high school restroom.
The incident occurred after school May 17 at South Fort Myers High School and was reported to a school resource officer the next day.
Since then, 16 students have been disciplined, which Amity Chandler, spokeswoman for the Lee County School District, said is the end of the school system's investigation. Although 25 teens entered the restroom, according to video surveillance in the hallway, not all participated in sexual activity.
After the incident was publicized, a cellphone video was posted on social media and then taken down, and the Lee County Sheriff's Office is investigating. The Florida Department of Children and Families also is involved in the case.
Because the girl is a 15-year-old, she could not legally consent to sex, said Irene Kepler, a licensed clinical social worker at Barry University’s Ellen Whiteside McDonnell School of Social Work in Miami Shores, Fla., who works on the university's Fort Myers campus.
“What’s disturbing on so many levels, too, is it happened on school property,” said Kepler, who came to a forum Wednesday at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fort Myers to discuss society's rape culture and its effect in incidents like the one at South Fort Myers High. She has seen the phrase, coined in the 1970s, play out in the past week as people have shamed the girl instead of asking whether she was a victim.
Florida's age of consent is 18 though state law contains a provision allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to consent to having sex with someone ages 16 to 23.
“The whole situation is very disgusting,” said Alex Bailey, 16, a sophomore at the school. “Every time people hear her name, they are going to think of her negatively.”
“Nobody should have to go through that,” he said. Some of his friends were involved and have been suspended or sent to the Alternative Learning Center as a reprimand.
The girl's mother told founder Megan Estrem of Be the Light, an advocacy group for victims of sex slavery, that a human trafficker had held her child captive for two years, reported WBBH-TV, Fort Myers-Cape Coral-Naples, Fla. She had been a student at South Fort Myers High for two weeks.
"She was not equipped to make a stable, rational decision in that situation," Estrem said.
The school district has social workers who work with students who have gone through trauma outside of schools, Chandler said.
“It’s easy to critique a scenario when you don’t know all of the facts,” she said. “Because of privacies afforded to students, we never have the privilege of being able to share the specific details of how we are serving the students in these situations.”
Students not directly affected also will have the opportunity to talk to a school counselor as they process what went on, Chandler said. And because the family of the teenage girl has said publicly that she is a victim of human trafficking, the school also will give students the chance to discuss these issues.
“We are undoubtedly going to have students that have questions about human trafficking and what that looks like and what they can do for friends who are in trouble,” she said.
For 15-year-old Elise Sexton, a Fort Myers High freshman, the troubling part is whether the teen girl could consent or not. She said the incident has been discussed at her school.
“It gets very confusing,” Sexton said. “Consent, was it there?”
Jenn Blosser, director of religious education at the Unitarian church, said many students she works with have been talking about the issue. That’s why she wanted to have the talk at the church, to elevate the level of conversation from judgment to understanding.
“Our kids are asking questions like, 'How does our society foster this?' ” Blosser said. “It’s a problem for us. All the students involved are precious and valued.”
Follow Melissa Montoya on Twitter: @MelissaMontoyaO