Virginia: The Baby with the Bathwater….

Dear Virginia Legislators:

Being a legislator is hard. Every day, you make decisions that affect the Commonwealth as a whole and I’m sure that is daunting in and of itself. Each phone call, each email, every contact that you receive is its own level of urgency and balancing that must be physical and mentally draining. So please don’t take what I am about to say as an affront to what you do. I respect your role in our governmental process but the decision-making in this area is flawed at best…

What am I talking about here? I’m talking about House Bill 257. This bill basically states that reporting crimes to the police that occur under school jurisdiction should be at the discretion of the principal — someone who is not a law enforcement officer or a Commonwealth Attorney. (https://www.wavy.com/news/politics/virginia-politics/republicans-call-on-gov-northam-to-veto-bill-that-would-stop-requiring-schools-to-report-misdemeanor-crimes-to-police/?fbclid=IwAR1vgj7IWVSubYvfLiZ-0355ZUhmlnwzxwH1n5FG1eHz6d7sxBJatk96S0w) From what I am reading about this bill, the intent of this was to decrease the school-to-prison pipeline. That makes sense. However, the ramifications of this bill are far beyond not reporting a child who was caught behind the dumpster with a blunt. To illustrate, I’m going to tell you a story:

My daughter Celeste was repeatedly raped in a Hampton City elementary school. The assaults started when she was five and the other child involved was seven. After more than ten assaults over an 18-month period, the school did nothing to protect my child’s safety. Even after my child’s assaults were discovered — after the school was REQUIRED BY LAW to report her assault to the authorities — the Hampton Police Department didn’t contact me for SIX MONTHS. The school didn’t have to report my daughter’s sexual assaults to the parent population by law. After they told me that the student was suspended for ten days and recommended for long term suspension or expulsion, they let her back into school after she was only out of school for FIVE DAYS. They let her back into regular programming with a teacher that had NO IDEA that she was molesting my daughter in the school bathroom. The teacher had no ability to even keep a watchful eye — the administration of the school didn’t feel it was necessary to give her a heads up. Now, I’m fighting for my daughter’s safety. If Hampton City Schools would have had their way, Celeste would still be in that school. She’d still be in a classroom with a student who repeatedly raped her. There are certain things that I feel should have been offered from the door — placement in another school of our family’s choice, payment for therapy costs, and an assurance that my daughter and her rapist would never be in the same school again and that Celeste would receive priority. Hampton City Schools is ZERO for THREE. Now, my family is fighting to make my daughter whole by removing her from HCS altogether. It’s a hard story with an even more absurd continuation.

So what would have happened if the principal at my daughter’s school would have had the choice to not report this crime to the Hampton Police Department? The schools are ranked on performance and low disciplinary rates, so in essence the ability to not report misdemeanors increases the school’s ranking as an individual institution and as a district. If a law like this is ratified by Ralph Northam, how do you ensure that those who get reported and those who don’t are treated fairly? How do you ensure that there won’t be discrimination across ethnic groups? Social groups? Economic statuses? Levels of disability? Explain to me where a principal has law enforcement training to properly assess whether something is a crime worth reporting to police? What parameters will be put in place to make sure that they don’t look at situations with a rose-colored lens and that our children suffer because they are not judged by an equitable lens? There are so many holes in this legislation that whole classrooms could fall through them.

The responsibility of the police is to take report of a crime and present the evidence to the Commonwealth Attorney. It is the police’s responsibility to look at a situation and judge whether there is probable cause for an arrest. It is the Commonwealth Attorney’s responsibility to make the decision on whether to prosecute or not. The Commonwealth Attorney has the ability to choose several different paths — they can send student to juvenile detention, they can defer adjudication, they can ask a judge for a CHINS order — the path to making sure that a student who commits a misdemeanor receives a judgement that will assist in correcting their path and not continuing down a treacherous road is open to the Commonwealth Attorney and they have a responsibility to our children to not only act in an equitable fashion for the accused, but also for their victims. In more cases than not, juvenile detention is a last resort and an expectation that wraparound services be put in place in order to produce positive outcomes and correct any type of delinquent behavior is a reasonable expectation. Wraparound services can include counseling, social services contact… the combination of what can be put in place to attempt to correct unfavorable behaviors are endless. Juvenile justice is not a pleasant thing — but it’s what we have. As the Commonwealth Attorney is an elected position, it is the citizen’s responsibility to hold their feet to the fire and do what is right for ALL people. Principals are not the individuals that need to make that conclusion and unless the intent is to deputize principals, the belief that they should be able to discern criminal intent is obtuse at best.

Principals have the ability to assign discipline to a student based on the guidelines of the school district — they are in every right able to make those decisions per the school district’s guidelines. That, however, is the extent of where their expertise should stop. By opening up the door for school administrators to make decisions that can be skewed by personal biases in a subject matter where they are not qualified to govern, the lines between school guidelines and criminality will be blurred.

The Commonwealth Attorney for the City of Hampton, Anton Bell, did not prosecute my daughter’s rapist. He didn’t even ask for our family’s input — not a phone call, an email or a smoke signal. He cared more about my daughter’s rapist than he cared about my daughter. As we move forward in our fight to make Celeste whole, I am reminded of the journey that we started 16 months ago when the news of Celeste’s assaults were reported to us. I have a strong little girl with a bright future. Her trek will be long, but she will come out okay on the other side thanks to her support system of people who love her fiercely and unconditionally. She’s lucky in that regard.

This legislation is being toted as a democratic agenda item. I’m a Democrat and I do not approve. As stated above, I understand what was trying to be accomplished with this legislation. By attempting to correct one flaw, the door is being opened to allow more wrongs. That in itself does not protect our children — it opens the floodgates to do far more harm than good.

Sincerely,

Nikia Miller

For more information on my daughter’s case, please visit www.facebook.com/groups/8forCeleste. Her Change.org petition is at https://www.change.org/8forCeleste If you would be interested in assisting us with educational and/or legal costs, please contribute to our GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/8forCeleste