Charleston schools, police failed to protect students from sexual abuse, lawsuit claims
Charleston County SC January 4 2019
A family is taking the Charleston County School District and local police officials to court alleging they allowed a worker at Dunston Elementary School to sexually abuse their son and other young boys.
“This case is not about the lion, but the individuals and agencies that let the lion lock these innocent children in his cage,” states a lawsuit filed by the boy’s family Jan. 2 in a Charleston County court.
The lawsuit stems from the case of the now-deceased Marvin Gethers, a student concern specialist at the North Charleston public school who was accused of downloading child pornography and sexually abusing young boys in his office.
Parents and community leaders have expressed outrage since public records revealed that a school district IT specialist discovered pornography, including child pornography, on Gethers’ district-issued laptop in January 2014, but the district allowed him to return to work.
In addition to financial damages, the lawsuit seeks to resolve questions that have been left unanswered by police and school district investigations to date. The school district has also hired a law firm to conduct an external investigation of the case following public pressure in the fall of 2018. Results from that investigation have not been released.
According to the lawsuit, one boy and his mother had a meeting on Jan. 13, 2014, with Gethers, the school principal and the school resource officer where they claimed Gethers had slapped and hit the boy in a “counseling room.”
The officer allegedly refused to believe the claims, saying Gethers was “a good person.”
The pornography was not discovered on Gethers’ district-issued laptop until Jan. 27, 2014, at which point the district placed him on paid administrative leave for about a week and handed the computer over to police.
As a police forensic investigation of the laptop dragged on for 21 months, the district not only brought Gethers back to the school but later promoted him to the higher-paid position of parent advocate.
In a letter to district officials dated Jan. 31, 2014, Gethers apologized for accessing pornography on his computer but claimed it was “adult content with adults only in its content.”
“I have asked my Lord and Savior to forgive me and I know that He has,” Gethers wrote. “I am asking for your decision of forgiveness as well. … If given a second chance to prove myself redeemable, I promise that I would take every measure to not let this happen again.”
Gethers did not stop abusing young boys after his laptop was confiscated, according to the lawsuit. With his own office inside the Remount Road school, Gethers preyed on young boys by “coaxing them to his private office, summoning them from class at his pleasure, and intercepting them on their way to and from the restroom,” the lawsuit states.
The school district recognized Gethers as its 2014-15 Classified Teacher of the Year, an honor that came with a new iPad and free use of a MINI automobile for the year, according to the lawsuit.
Gethers was arrested on charges of possessing child pornography in January 2016, after which multiple children came forward to tell police Gethers had molested them. Two other boys, who are not included in the lawsuit, accused Gethers of molesting them during a time period between August and December 2015, according to interview transcripts obtained by the plaintiffs’ attorney Mark Peper.
Gethers died in July 2017 before his case went to trial.
The complaint contains details not previously revealed by Freedom of Information Act requests to the district. It refers to a death certificate that says Gethers was infected with HIV at the time of his death. It claims that an IT specialist knew in 2014 that Gethers had downloaded “pornographic teen videos” and notified district officials, including then-Associate Superintendent James Winbush.
When the police forensic investigation was completed, it showed that Gethers had searched and downloaded close to 23,000 websites, images and videos of adult and child porn on his district-issued laptop.
The complaint also references forensic interviews of three young boys conducted at the Dee Norton Lowcountry Children’s Center in which the boys described Gethers’ alleged abuse.
According to the lawsuit, the boys said Gethers took photographs of them naked, molested them, and slapped them if they cried. He also threatened to kill them if they told anyone what was happening and showed them pictures of “death, a skull, someone being stabbed,” according to the interviews referenced in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit was filed anonymously by the family of “John Doe,” who was 8 or 9 years old at the time of the alleged abuse.
It names the Charleston County School District, city of North Charleston and Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon as defendants and seeks financial damages to be awarded by a jury.
The school district office is closed until Jan. 4. A district spokesperson said the district had not been served with the lawsuit and declined to comment.
A judge ruled this month that the Charleston County School District was “grossly negligent” in failing to respond to a request from parents whose child was injured in the hallway at Liberty Hill Academy.
Post and Courier
