A lawyer for the Hamilton County Board of Education denied interfering with an investigation into Ooltewah High School’s sexual harassment culture following the 2015 rape of a student, but one board member said Tuesday he and his colleagues need more answers.
Scott Bennett never limited Courtney Bullard’s probe into compliance by Ooltewah and Hamilton County with sexual harassment and bullying policies, according to a motion filed Sunday by other attorneys for the school board. If anything, Bennett asked Bullard to expand her review to “the full measure of problems facing the school system,” the motion says.
But you wouldn’t know it reading the 83-page motion that plaintiffs’ attorneys for two student victims filed last week.
“Mr. Bennett reiterates that the scope of Ms. Bullard’s investigation ‘doesn’t need to be limited to Title IX’ and that a ‘nonviolation of Title IX’ ought not ‘cover up a breach of duty,'” attorney Charles Purcell wrote in Sunday’s motion. “The plaintiff fails to reference any of these statements because they do not fit within the false narrative filed with the court.”
Title IX is the federal statute that protects students from sex- and gender-based discrimination, and violations could open up the school system to more liability as it litigates two civil suits from student victims in Chattanooga’s U.S. District Court.