$5.75 Million Awarded To Deaf & Blind Students

$5.75 Million Settlement Awarded to Deaf and Blind Students Sexually Assaulted by Gang at Hawaii Public School.

HONOLULU, Hawaii -- A young girl is forced to perform oral sex on an older boy while he films her with his cell phone camera and students at their school look on, another young girl becomes pregnant after she is raped by a male student at her school, a young boy is sodomized in the bathroom by an older student, but school administrators don’t penalized the perpetrator, another child is sexually assaulted by five boys on campus, and nothing is done to stop them or punish after the fact.

These are not scenarios from an NBC’s Law and Order: Special Victims Unit episode, they are actual events that parents say took place at the Hawaii School for the Deaf and Blind, the state’s only public school for children with these disabilities.

For more than a decade, some of the school’s administrators and students covered up a terrible secret young children between 12 and 16 years old were being terrorized - robbed, raped, sodomized and even gang raped on campus and on the school buses – not by employees, but by other children. There are just 80 children enrolled in the school, which is located on the edge of Waikiki, Hawaii’s main tourism hub, and just across the street from the Honolulu Zoo.

One student heading a gang calling themselves the “Ringleaders” orchestrated the attacks, and students were ordered to participate as attackers or retaliated against.

Michael Green is one of five attorneys who successfully secured a $5,750,000 settlement last week from the state and a school counselor... Read The Full Story.

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$5.75 Million Awarded To Deaf & Blind Students

Sex Assaults Lawsuit Involving Deaf & Blind Students

Settlement reached in lawsuit involving Hawaiian Deaf & Blind students.

HONOLULU, Hawaii -- A multi-million dollar settlement has been reached in a sex assault lawsuit involving Hawaii Center for the Deaf and Blind. It's been a year and a half since the State was sued by a group of students at the school. The students alleged they had been sexually abused by other students.

Friday, the attorney representing the group announced that a multi-million dollar settlement has been reached. A spotlight was cast on the Hawaii Center for the Deaf and Blind in the Kapahulu area in 2011, after police started investigating allegations of widespread sex abuse between classmates.

In August 2011, Honolulu attorney Michael Green filed a lawsuit against the state, on behalf of 50 to 60 students.

"What we found out was, and I never thought about this, that we had children who were the aggressors, we're talking about sodomizing boys, boys on boys, boys on girls, girls on girls, in the bathroom, on school buses, in the bushes, that because no one seemed to care it seemed like it was okay. So people who were victims became aggressors. And you know that part that maybe affected me the most aside from the fact it's happening to young people, and people that have disabilities is that if you cry out who can hear you? If you have blind students who can see it?" said Green.

The State has now agreed to pay $5M to settle the lawsuit - money that'll go to the victims, and to pay for counseling and treatment... Read The Full Story.

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#DomesticViolence - #SexAssault - #SexualViolence