Bellingham school administrators accused of failing to report student assaults resolve cases
Three Bellingham Public Schools administrators accused of failing to report a high school student’s sexual assaults have resolved their criminal cases.
The administrators — Jeremy Gilbert Louzao, Maude Chimere Hackney and Meghan V. Dunham — were each criminally cited Dec. 7, 2022, in Whatcom County District Court with one count of failure to report, a gross misdemeanor. The crime is punishable by up to one year in jail and a $5,000 fine.
Now, nearly a year to the day they were charged, the three administrators have resolved the criminal charges through an agreed resolution between the prosecution and defense attorneys.
Louzao, Hackney and Dunham all entered into a deferred prosecution agreement at an afternoon court hearing Tuesday, Dec. 5, in Whatcom County District Court.
The Whatcom County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office agreed to continue the criminal cases for roughly 90 days while the administrators do community service. Once that service has been completed, the prosecutor’s office will dismiss the charges against all three administrators, Whatcom County Prosecuting Attorney Eric Richey said Tuesday in court.
“We have reached a resolution today. I think we’ve done what we need to do to resolve these cases with some accountability,” Richey said. “We believe this is the appropriate resolution for the community as a whole and the protection of our children.”
Louzao, Hackney and Dunham also submitted a joint letter to the court Tuesday, expressing their beliefs that they responded appropriately to the student’s allegations based on the training and experience they had at the time.
The letter states that the three administrators “believed that they responded appropriately in response to allegations of unwanted sexual contact between two students, based on their training and experience. After conducting a full review of the incident, however, we acknowledge and understand that the unwanted sexual contact disclosed should have been reported to the Department of Children, Youth & Families (DCYF) or a law enforcement agency within 48 hours pursuant to RCW 26.44.030. We also acknowledge that key improvements in internal communication, communication with students and families and a more formalized reporting protocol — in collaboration with law enforcement and DCYF — should have been made in this case.”
Since the criminal investigation started, the three administrators have worked to “improve their practice and strengthen training and have demonstrated themselves to be professional and responsible in mandatory reporting duties,” the letter continues. “Given these circumstances, the Whatcom County Prosecutor’s Office and the administrators believe that a negotiated resolution is appropriate. Together, we recognize the vital importance of these close professional collaborations for the safety of our children, youth and families in Whatcom County.”
Devoted to education
Criminal defense attorney Michael Brodsky, who represented Hackney, said in court Tuesday that he disagreed with the prosecution’s assessment that the administrators’ letter admitted guilt.
“I think the statement is very explicit that mistakes may have been made and that things should have been done differently and that they’re undertaking steps to improve their response to these situations, but that there’s nothing in the statement that states ‘We specifically did something wrong’, and I wanted to make sure that was clear,” Brodsky said.
Criminal defense attorney Stephen Jackson, who represented Dunham, echoed Brodksy’s statements in court. He said Dunham acted in a way that she believed was correct at the time the student brought her allegations forward, and that with additional training, Dunham would do things differently if the allegations had come forward now.
“I also think it’s important to note that the way this has been portrayed in the media is that these three individuals were protecting a rapist running around at Squalicum High School, and that’s not the case at all. These three individuals have spent decades molding our children and devoting their lives to this community,” Jackson said.
The administrators, who appeared in person in the courtroom for the first time, nodded in agreement as Jackson spoke.
Jackson said Dunham is beloved within the school district and community and is responsible for helping institute a program within the district that allows students who are parents and expectant parents to continue their education.
When reviewing Dunham’s communications in preparation for trial in the case, Jackson said he found that Dunham was “someone who is 24/7 dealing with her students and helping them to a degree that I think is very laudable.”
Jackson said Dunham’s — and to extent the other administrators’ — reputations have been sullied by the way information has been presented to the community.
“I am very pleased with the resolution that we’ve come forward to the court with,” Jackson said, adding that the community service “allows these administrators who have devoted their lives to our children to become even better at helping our children and our community.”
Criminal defense attorney Bob Butler, who represented Louzao, said he, too, was pleased with the resolution in the cases.
While they were ready to go to trial next week, Butler said trial ultimately would have been bad for the students involved.
“Win, lose or draw, putting students on the stand to go through this was not in their best interest, and it was a consistent theme with regards to my representation that students come first,” Butler said in court Tuesday.
As part of the deferred prosecution, the administrators are expected to complete training to become Title IX coordinators, which is being offered by Bellingham Public Schools.
A review hearing has tentatively been scheduled for March 7. It’s possible the administrators’ cases could be dismissed prior to that date if their community service is completed sooner. The cases will remain pending until that time.
District response
In a note sent late Tuesday to students, staff and the public, Bellingham Public Schools Superintendent Greg Baker said the district was pleased with the resolution in the case.
Baker’s statement said the district continues “to believe that our staff acted in good faith to protect and support a student, and that the specific information they received did not require a mandatory report.”
Baker said all three administrators have been working in their original positions and that “they continuously demonstrate that they are caring, hard-working professionals.”
“The safety of our students is our highest priority, and we will continue to provide training to all Bellingham Public Schools staff, so they can provide appropriate responses when students report sexual misconduct or assault, and other forms of abuse and neglect,” Baker’s statement reads. “We know the importance of believing and listening to students and survivors and taking action right away to support them.”
The district said it is working to strengthen its relationships with law enforcement, state child protection services, survivor advocates and community partners.
When reached by phone Tuesday after court and asked why he thought this was the best resolution in the administrators’ cases, Richey, the prosecutor, said he was limited in what he could say because it’s still technically a pending matter.
“The administrators submitted statements that indicated that they should have reported the abuse and failed to. ... That was something that was important to the prosecutor’s office, to law enforcement and to the community,” Richey said.
“I’d like to see that this conversation continues within our community and across the state and make sure that children are protected better within our schools,” Richey said in regards to mandatory reporting and what he hoped came from Tuesday’s court hearing.
Jackson, Dunham’s defense attorney, declined to provide additional comments on the resolution of the case. He said both he and Dunham were relying on the statements provided in court Tuesday and the letter.
The Bellingham Herald has reached out to the defense attorneys for Louzao and Hackney for comment.
Background
All three administrators previously pleaded not guilty in the case, and their joint jury trial was expected to begin next week, on Dec. 11, The Bellingham Herald previously reported.
Bellingham Public Schools is providing legal defense for the three administrators, as is required by state law for public employers that are required to report abuse.
All three of the administrators are mandatory reporters and are required by state law to report any suspected abuse or neglect of a child to law enforcement or to the Washington State Department of Children, Youth & Families.
Prosecutors alleged that none of the three administrators reported a female Squalicum High School student’s sexual assaults — which were brought to the administrators’ attention in mid-January 2022 — to law enforcement or the state child protective services agency.
The three were then issued criminal citations in early December 2022 for their alleged failures in their mandatory reporting obligations.
News of the citations prompted several hundred Squalicum High School students to walk out of class in protest in December 2022. The students accused the school district of silencing sexual assault victims and of mishandling addressing the criminal citations of the three employees. In response, the district met with students and brought in local victim advocacy organizations to the high school.
The district also said it has “devoted significant attention” to ensuring its employees have received recent training on their mandatory reporting obligations.
At the time the criminal citations were issued, Louzao and Dunham were serving as assistant principals at Squalicum High School, while Hackney was an assistant principal at Bellingham High School.
All three were reassigned in early January to the school district’s Department of Teaching and Learning. They were also included among the list of 60 administrative staff members the district recommended to the school board for employment for the 2023-24 school year.
The school board approved that list at its May 18 meeting, The Herald previously reported.
Louzao, Dunham and Hackney were reinstated to their roles as assistant high school principals in late June. Louzao and Dunham returned to Squalicum High School, while Hackney returned to Bellingham High School for the current school year.
The district made the decision to return the administrators to their previous roles at the end of the 2022-23 school year.
The school district said in a late-August email to The Herald that it continued to support the administrators, that it believes they acted in good faith and that it did not believe any of the three violated any policies.
Because the district hasn’t determined that any of the three broke school district policy, none of the administrators has received any internal discipline.
Federal lawsuit, criminal cases
The former Squalicum High School female student who has accused the district of mishandling her sexual assault reports filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Dec. 7, 2022, against Bellingham Public Schools.
The student, who has since withdrawn from the high school and began attending another school, accuses the district in her lawsuit of violating her federal Title IX rights, failing its duty to protect and care for her and neglecting its duties to report the sexual assaults to law enforcement.
She previously sought $1 million in damages from the district before filing the federal lawsuit.
The district denied it mishandled the student’s reports in its January response to the lawsuit. The district said it took reasonable steps to stop the reported harassment, that the assault allegations contained in the student’s lawsuit were not reported to the administrators and that the conduct that was reported to them was not considered abuse or neglect under state law.
The federal lawsuit, which is pending, had been delayed until the three administrators’ criminal cases were resolved. Because the administrators have a Constitutional right against self-incrimination, a full discovery interview with each of them could not realistically be completed until after the criminal matter was resolved, federal court records show.
The male student accused of sexually assaulting the female student was sentenced July 19 in Whatcom County Juvenile Court to 18-20 weeks in the custody of the state Juvenile Rehabilitation Administration. (The county’s juvenile court is a division of Whatcom County Superior Court).
The boy previously pleaded guilty May 17 to amended charges of two counts of fourth-degree assault with sexual motivation. He also resolved two unrelated criminal cases at the time. A restitution hearing in the case is tentatively scheduled for Jan. 10.
Detective fired, charged
Adam (Bo) S. McGinty, who was the lead Bellingham Police Department detective who spent more than a year investigating the female student’s sexual assault allegations and the school administrators’ alleged failure to report the assaults, himself became the subject of an internal administrative investigation and a criminal investigation in mid-May.
He is now facing felony and gross misdemeanor charges in court.
McGinty is alleged to have misused public funds by using another officer’s dry cleaning stipend. The dry cleaning stipend is offered to employees as part of their collective bargaining agreement. He has also been placed on a dishonest officers list.
Bellingham police started its internal affairs investigation into McGinty on May 18, and he was placed on paid administrative leave June 7. The internal investigation was completed July 21, and the recommended discipline for McGinty was termination. Bellingham Police Chief Rebecca Mertzig then fired McGinty on Aug. 18.
The issues surrounding McGinty had led to multiple delays in the administrators’ court cases, The Herald previously reported.
Richey, the prosecutor, said by phone Tuesday that both his office and Bellingham police have worked diligently on the administrators’ cases.
“We did not come to this resolution because of any concerns about Bellingham police’s investigation,” Richey said.
Resources
▪ Brigid Collins Family Support Center: 360-734-4616, brigidcollins.org
Brigid Collins Family Support Center professionals are on call between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Monday through Friday to answer questions about children, families, abuse prevention or treatment at 360-734-4616.
▪ Child Protective Services: Washington state hot line for reporting child abuse and neglect, 866-829-2153.
▪ Domestic Violence & Sexual Assault Services: 24-hour Help Line: 360-715-1563, Email: info@dvsas.org.
▪ Lummi Victims of Crime: 360-312-2015.
▪ Tl’ils Ta’á’altha Victims of Crime: 360-325-3310 or nooksacktribe.org/departments/youth-family-services/tlils-taaaltha-victims-of-crime-program/
▪ Bellingham Police: You can call anonymously at 360-778-8611, or go online at cob.org/tips.
▪ WWU Consultation and Sexual Assault Support Survivor Advocacy Services: 360-650-3700 or wp.wwu.edu/sexualviolence/.
If you or a child is in immediate danger, call 911 and make a report to law enforcement.
To report child abuse or neglect call 1-866-END HARM.
This story was originally published December 5, 2023 at 3:53 PM.
