BOISE, Idaho — This article originally ran in the Idaho Press
As Timberline High School has recently made headlines for its sudden suspension of a math teacher, more has been bubbling under Boise School District — a disturbing trend of student-reported physical and sexual assault cases, on and off school grounds.
The Idaho Press conducted interviews with 10 people total, five on the record and five off the record, each speaking to various incidents they’ve experienced while in attendance in high schools in Boise School District — most from Timberline High School. All sources said they brought instances and concerns to school administration. While their stories are all slightly different, they each have one glaring similarity— they felt their complaints were met with inaction and silence from administrators at BSD and their schools.
“I felt so sad for any girls, any guys that are going through this because ... who are they supposed to talk to? Probably no one, because no one cares about doing anything,” 2021 Timberline High graduate Daniella Rosas said.
In an interview with the Idaho Press, BSD Human Resource Director Jason Hutchinson said that every allegation reported by students and staff is taken seriously by the district, whether it be harassment, sexual or physical assault.
Several of the assault victims noted various teachers and staff were more than helpful in pursuit of reporting the claims. The most referenced teacher was Laura Boulton, who was recently suspended from Timberline High for unknown reasons.
The Idaho Press has made multiple attempts to contact staff members at Timberline, but no one responded to requests for comment. Under Idaho law, Title IX reports and records are strictly protected and not open to the public, according to BSD Communications Director Ryan Hill.
“We try to remind everybody that if a person feels as though they’ve not been heard or the complaint has not been sufficiently responded to, that they reach out to another trusted adult,” Hutchinson said. “In fact, I would say there are people out there right now that have a story to tell that they either haven’t shared or feel that they have not been heard.”
Hutchinson could not have been more right.
Rosas told the Idaho Press she was raped by a senior at Borah High School, where she typically attended one period for Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps during the summer of her junior year at Timberline.
When she was 17, Rosas, now 20, picked up an 18-year-old acquaintance from work. They sat in the backseat of the van, talking in a parking lot — something Rosas said she did and still does frequently with friends.
Rosas remembers her outfit vividly: cowboy boots, jeans and a big cowboy belt with a flannel. The boots are the most clear in her mind because they were what she used to try and kick him off of her before the rape.
“We were sitting there talking and he kept on, like, wanting to touch me,” Rosas said. “I kept on pushing his hands away and I was like, ‘OK, you need to stop or I’m not going to take you home. We can’t be doing this. I don’t want to do this.’”
He didn’t listen, Rosas said, and continued touching her near her bellybutton, trying to tug off her pants. When she continued to say no, he grabbed her by her arms, pinning her beneath him.
“That’s why I remember the outfit, because I remember using the heel of my boots to kick his shins,” Rosas said. “I know it hurt him because he clearly didn’t like it and he got more angry at me for not wanting to do anything.”
Eventually, he got what he wanted.
Rosas felt powerless.
“In my mind, I was like ‘I can’t do anything else. I can’t do any more,’” Rosas said. “The more I was fighting, the more I felt like maybe I deserved it because I was stupid enough to let him in my car and stupid enough to do my normal friend thing like I would do with everyone else and try to have a good connection with him.”
After he raped her, the silence in the van was piercing. Rosas arms ached from his hands pinning her down.
“I remember telling myself he still needs to get home. I told myself ‘I need to drop him off,” Rosas said.
So she did. She didn’t cry until he was out of the van.
Rosas didn’t report the incident to her school immediately. She waited two or three days.
“I didn’t feel confident that like they were actually going to even do anything. And I was kind of right,” Rosas said.
She reported the rape to her school resource officer and had photos taken of the bruises on her body that came as a result of the rape.
The officer made a report about it, telling her that they would have to confront the boy about it.
According to Hill, a Title IX report does not automatically trigger a police report, but if the complaint involved sexual abuse, it would be reported to the police.
When any Title IX report is filed, the school district keeps it for seven years, Hutchinson said.
“I saw (him) walking the halls,” Rosas said. “I haven’t heard anything at that point. I didn’t hear anything from the school and to hear about anything that they were going to try to do just like keep me away from him. It just didn’t seem like they actually cared, because it wasn’t in the school, it doesn’t matter.”
At the sight of him, Rosas had a panic attack, running to the bathrooms to get away from him.
“He walked so confidently and like he didn’t do anything wrong,” Rosas said. “It just felt like he gets to walk away scot-free, when I have bruises and I have PTSD and I have like trauma from that. He gets to be fine.”
Rosas longed for an increase in police involvement in her case, even though the SRO followed up with her after her attacker graduated from Borah, providing her with updates as they came from the investigation. She hasn’t heard anything since. She never checked to see if a police report was filed.
According to Hutchinson, when complaints like Rosas are made verbally or in writing, they go directly to a Title IX coordinator (Hutchinson) after a school administrator reports it. When that complaint arrives, the administration conducts an investigation, and, assuming Title IX was violated, they will continue that investigation until any discipline warranted is administered. An assault or action falls under Title IX if it meets the definition of sexual harassment, assault or discrimination based on sex or gender identity. Discipline includes suspension or detention, Hutchinson said.
“At the heart of it, (Title IX) is in place to ensure that students who experience any form of sex or gender based harassment, assault, discrimination, that they’re able to continue to pursue and access their education free from such behaviors,” Hutchinson said.
According to Rosas, she was told that it was too late to do much of anything about the incident, though she reported it a few days after the incident. When it came to her interactions with administration at Timberline, Rosas said she never felt heard. It is unclear if Borah High was ever alerted about the incident. Typically it would be the responsibility of the school district to follow up with individual high schools.
When assault or harassment reports are made to BSD employees, a plan is created before an investigation begins to ensure students feel safe at school, Hutchinson said.
“We typically include checking things like the supportive measures are in place and there will be a list of what those are,” Hutchinson said. “We will check-in and, this could vary depending on circumstance, but we will check in, six weeks after to determine whether or not these supportive measures are working or we need to make any tweaks.”
The system doesn’t always work like that though, according to Rosas.
“They would sit there and listen, but then they didn’t really care,” Rosas said. “... they didn’t really tell us how to report assaults. They act like it’s not even there in the school, like it doesn’t even happen.”
Adults at Timberline would also openly express to students that assaults didn’t happen there, invalidating Rosas’ experiences, she said.
“It makes me feel like what happened to me didn’t matter,” Rosas said. “… I was very prone to self harm ... that just made me feel like anything I did didn’t matter and made me more prone to depression and suicidal thoughts about myself, because I thought, ‘I have to live with this and no one’s going to be able to help me go through it.’”
Rosas isn’t the only one who lives with that burden.
During Anistyn Moore’s junior year, she was assaulted in a hallway while hiding behind a locker, she said.
“Nobody could see me. He pushed me up to the wall and choked me,” Moore said. “He didn’t lift me off the ground, but he choked me with one hand ... it was forceful enough to create bruises on my neck of a handprint.”
Her first thought was concern for the boy. Even two years later, as she relayed the story to the Idaho Press, she didn’t say his name.
“I didn’t want to get him in trouble,” Moore said. “I just ran away from him.”
Later, Moore told a trusted teacher who took Moore to school administration. After hearing what happened to Moore, the administrator defended the boy who choked her, she said.
“He said, ‘he’s a good kid. I really don’t think he’d do anything to harm anyone,’” Moore recalled.
The administrator emailed Timberline’s principal, alerting her to Moore’s situation but discounted it as roughhousing, Moore said.
“They were not empathetic about my situation at all,” Moore said. “I didn’t feel like I could actually tell them how I felt about it because I was so busy being absorbed in the fact that like, ‘oh, what if they’re right? What if I’m just being dramatic?’”
Moore said she was never informed of Timberline administration doing anything further about the incident. So, when she graduated in May, Moore wrote emails to speak up for herself, sent to BSD and various news organizations.
According to Moore, every email she sent was taken down so staff could not respond or read her letters. She has no idea how many teachers or staff actually saw her testimonial emails. And she says that she received a phone call from someone from the district telling her that sending out those emails was illegal.
According to Moore, the experience has shown her that the district will “sweep anything and everything under the rug to disguise how insanely corrupt the staff at Timberline High School is.”
Moore filed a police report against the boy a few days after the assault in November 2021, but was told there wasn’t enough proof for anything to be done about the assault.
“I didn’t get communicated about anything,” she said.
All the while, Moore was beginning to learn that the problem was bigger than her.
“I have two other friends that I know for sure have also been treated the same exact way as me,” Moore said. “I have no idea how many more people have been assaulted and it’s been swept under the rug ... But two, three people in one school is already a lot of people.”
In 2020, Kennedy Hadlock was a junior at Timberline and had taken an internship provided through the school where, she said, an older worker said to her, “you little slut leaning up on that piece of metal. I’ll give you something to sit still about and put something between those legs.”
Although shaken, Hadlock was sure that she would be supported and helped after the experience, so she filed a formal complaint with the business. The man she identified as her harasser refuted her complaint, saying that Hadlock had previously made inappropriate comments to other co-workers.
He was not reprimanded in any way that she knew of. Hadlock saw him every day and later dropped the internship.
“It traumatized me,” Hadlock said.
Even though it’s been two years and she’s since moved states, Hadlock tears up when she thinks about that summer.
“I think that there were multiple systems that had failed me in this entire situation,” Hadlock said.
After that summer, Hadlock approached Timberline staff with her story.
“I don’t ever ever, ever, ever, ever want another girl to go through what I went through and have that same experience,” Hadlock said.
But the administration at Timberline never made a formal report about Hadlock’s story, she said, telling her that because her internship safety forms and W2 tax forms that she had electronically signed were never printed out and stored in school files, Hadlock said.
The internship is still offered through Timberline High and the man she complained about is still at the business, she said.
A.G., who elected to use her initials for safety reasons, said she was held at knife-point by a boy in a classroom at Les Bois Junior High in September 2019. The boy’s aggression came a few days after he had told A.G. about his struggles with suicide ideation and attempts.
The two finished their lab projects at the same time and their teacher excused them to go back to the classroom early.
“I walk in, I put my stuff down on the table and when I’m writing my name on my paper he grabs a pocket knife that he brought to school, and he flicks it out. He puts it into my spine, piercing the skin,” A.G. recalled. She said he put his hand over her mouth and whispered, “Don’t tell anyone what I told you.”
And she didn’t.
The days and years following that incident were filled with dissociation and sleepless nights that were so extreme, A.G. started taking prescribed sleeping pills.
When A.G. moved to Timberline, she often saw that boy walking through the halls. There was nothing she could do about it. But being held at knife-point wasn’t the only issue A.G. experienced in the Boise School District, she said.
Students in classrooms often bullied A.G., throwing things at her during class or calling her names, she said. On one occasion, A.G. said she overheard a boy telling his friends that he wanted to rape her in a school bathroom.
“I can handle death threats,” A.G. said. “I can handle them saying that I should die and that I’m ugly. But I kind of don’t like it when I’m threatened with rape.”
In retaliation, she found the student’s mother’s contact information online, A.G.’s mother said. In A.G.’s voicemail, A.G. said she was with the high school, calling about a student’s inappropriate comments toward her.
A.G. was then suspended for impersonation of school officials.
“But it’s fine for him to make threats about wanting to rape me,” A.G. said sarcastically.
Of the other sources the Idaho Press talked to on and off the record, two said they were sexually assaulted at Timberline and three said they felt threatened in other ways, physically and verbally.
On Sept. 18, BSD, potentially prompted by an interview with the Idaho Press, sent out an email to parents and guardians, notifying them that the district would be sending students information regarding their commitment to providing an education free from sex and gender-based discrimination, harassment or retaliation.
“If you are aware of any report that has been made to Boise School District staff regarding sexual harassment or sexual assault that has not been addressed, we would like to hear about it,” the email said.
Reports of sexual harassment or assault should be emailed to titleixcoordinator@boiseschools.org. According to the email, students can file or report complaints about violations of Title IX through communication with a counselor, teacher, by emailing Hutchinson or by using an online reporting form.
“If you are the victim of sexual harassment or sexual assault involving students or staff, whether it happened on campus or not, please report this to the District. The District has a broad array of supports for you whether you wish to file a formal complaint or not,” the email said.
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