POCOLA, Okla. — According to court documents, Pocola Public School employees are being sued by a student's father for allegedly failing to correctly report the student's claims of being sexually abused at home.
The child was allegedly sent home and reported more abuse the following day to officials at her school.
Additional defendants in the lawsuit include the Oklahoma Department of Human Services (OKDHS), and the school district itself, Pocola Public Schools.
The lawsuit states that the child initially reported sexual abuse at home on September 15, 2021, to Shay Tompkins, an emergency certified teacher at Pocola Public Schools and defendant in the case. The student was then reportedly sent “to the home where she disclosed that she had been abused.” The school also failed to notify the parent of the disclosure, according to the lawsuit.
According to court documents, Tompkins reported the incident to Pocola Elementary School Principal Clint Beesly, another defendant in the lawsuit, who consulted the school counselor who advised contacting the OKDSH hotline and the local police department.
However, the lawsuit says that when superintendent Jason Brittain was contacted, he told his employees that they only needed to report the incident to the hotline. While the incident was reported to the OKDHS hotline, according to the lawsuit no one contacted the Pocola Police Department. OKDHS also reportedly failed to begin an assessment of the report and took no immediate action to prevent further harm to the child.
The lawsuit alleges that when the student returned to school the day after the original report, they informed a different school employee that they had been sexually abused at home the night before, and the child identified the abuser as Eric Taylor, another defendant in the lawsuit.
Taylor resides at an Oklahoma prison as of the filing of the lawsuit on June 2, 2023.
OKDSH, the school district, and the school employees stand accused of failing to fulfill their duty of protecting children by not properly handling allegations of sexual assault against a minor.
According to court documents, the defendants failed “to protect [the child] and the resulting injuries were caused and brought about by [their] negligence and wanton disregard.”
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