By Logan B. Anderson

DOVER — While addressing state legislators on Wednesday, a victim of sexual abuse by a public-school teacher said every Delaware public school should have a warning sign urging parents to beware.

Speaking in support of House Bill 277, Sydney Bates urged lawmakers to release the bill from the House Judiciary Committee.

“I’m hoping that we can do better to protect children. As it stands right now, every public school in Delaware should have a big red ‘Enter at Your Own Risk’ sign. Parents don’t know this. When they send their kids to school and a teacher abuses their kid at school, unless someone comes out and says, ‘yes, I saw that.’ They won’t be able to collect any damages,” Ms. Bates said.

“It’s wrong. It’s sad. I think as a government you are supposed to be protecting, especially children, we can do better.”

Currently, in the state of Delaware if a trusted employee of any private business, school or organization that works with children sexually abuses a child the private entity can be held liable in civil court. That is not true for the Delaware public school system.

The measure, sponsored by Rep. Sean M. Lynn, D-Dover, seeks to reinforce the current statute and add public schools to the list of employers that can be sued in cases of sexual abuse and assault.

“We can all agree that one of the most heinous crimes, one of the most horrible things that can happen to a family here in the state of Delaware is for one of our children to be sexually abused by an entity or a person that we entrust into their care and I think that there is unanimity amongst this committee that is perhaps every parent’s nightmare and one of the worst circumstances that a family or a child can face,” Rep. Lynn said.

“What this bill does is it steps up the level of accountability to try to preclude instances of child sexual abuse from happening in our public schools. And it does this by changing the standard of negligence from gross negligence to simply negligence, bringing public schools in line and state agencies in line with their private sector counterparts.”

Ms. Bates was 15 years old, according to her attorney Larry Kimmel, when gym teacher and wrestling coach Richard “Dickie” Howell II began pursuing the former Caesar Rodney High School student.

“My freshman year in high school the grooming process started,” Ms. Bates explained to the committee on Wednesday. “Then into my junior year and into my senior year was when the actual sexual abuse happened. And that went on for 10 months. On school property and off of school property as well.”

According to court documents sexual interactions took place in Howell’s residence, at another teacher’s home (not named in court documents) and at the high school. The abuse stopped when Ms. Bates told CR’s principal and assistant principal about what was happening.

In 2015, Howell was arrested, pleaded guilty to rape and sentenced to prison.

He was recently released and lives in Maryland as a registered sex offender

“As a result, from that I have severe PTSD,” Ms. Bates said.

Ms. Bates tried to take the school and the school district to court in 2017. The suit claimed Caesar Rodney School District was liable, through Howell’s behavior, for assault and battery, gross negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and fraud.

The school district “argued that Howell was acting outside the scope of his employment in having sexual relations (with the student) so it was not liable ... Additionally, Caesar Rodney sought summary judgment on (Ms. Bates’ gross negligence claim, arguing that the record is devoid of evidence supporting that claim).”

Two years later the case was shut down because current law protected Howell’s employer.

The court sided with the district and Ms. Bates’ chance to confront Caesar Rodney officials in court was squashed.

“I will never get my day in court … my case is over, a closed chapter in my life. But this is going to happen again. Nobody tells you when you are coming up in school — they talk about fire alarms, what to do if there is a shooter or bullying, etc. — but nobody tells you what to do when your teacher starts sending you smiley faces,” Ms. Bates said.

Rep. Lynn said he hopes HB277 would force school districts to take more action and be more involved in supervising and training their faculty and staff to prevent sexual abuse and assault from happening on their watches.

“If a child is abused while the perpetrator is doing the perpetrator’s job the employer should be responsible,” Rep. Lynn said.

Dr. John W. Marinucci in his role as the executive director of the Delaware School Boards Association, spoke out against HB277 during Wednesday’s House Judiciary Committee hearing.

The DSBA represents 18 of the 19 conventional school boards on the state of Delaware.

While he agreed that sexual assault of school children is abhorrent, he expressed that the state’s current laws went far enough. He also expressed concern that the action was focused on the public school system.

“I’m not a lawyer, but as I understand, it does allow schools and the districts to be held responsible and liable for damages to victims of childhood sexual crimes provided that the district was grossly or wantonly, as the law currently says, negligent. House Bill 277 removes the limitations of liability … but I cannot see in the bill where it removes that liability or changes that limitation of liability for other state agencies. So, it appears that all other state agencies including child-serving state agencies, continued to enjoy the benefit of the protections (of the current code). And my question would be why does the bill target us as currently written?” Dr. Marinucci said.

Dr. Marinucci said he was also concerned that if HB277 becomes law, school boards would have to pay more in liability insurance.

After hearing more than an hour of debate and discussion on the measure, the House Judiciary Committee voted to release the bill to its next step, debate on the House floor, with six “yes” votes, one member absent and four members of the committee — Representatives Franklin D. Cooke, D-New Castle, Stephen Smyk, R-Milton, Jeffrey N. Spiegelman, R-Clayton, and Jesse R. Vanderwende, R-Bridgeville — deciding not to vote on the bill’s release.