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Crime, Law and Justice
Peter Cox

Allegations of relentless bullying at Wabasha-Kellogg schools lead to lawsuit

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A lawsuit filed this week alleges that a student at Wabasha-Kellogg Public Schools bullied, harassed and assaulted a fellow student over three years, as the district did little to stop the behavior.

The suit was filed in U.S. District Court Tuesday. The suit, brought by the family of the student targeted with harassment, accuses the district of sexual harassment that violates both Title IX and the Minnesota Human Rights Act, negligence, and denial of equal protection and due process.

According to the filing, from 2021 to 2023, a male teenage student was bullied by a fellow student. The suit says the behavior was “unwelcome, severe, and pervasive.”

The bullying student targeted other students over the years, the suit alleges, including threatening to bring a gun to school and threatening to shoot another student.

The alleged bully targeted one student in particular, over and over, assaulting him, calling him names and even taking photos of him changing in the school locker room and sharing it widely in the school. The lawsuit says the harassment was relentless, and despite the student and his parents complaining to the school numerous times, the school’s responses to the behavior were minimal.

When the bully sent out photos of the student’s genitalia, the district’s response was to not allow him to have a phone at school for the rest of the semester and giving the bully a single day of in-school suspension and a verbal warning to not harass the student anymore.

The suit says three days after the bullying student sent the photo out, he again taunted the student in the cafeteria, talking about the photograph.

The suit says again, the school told the bullying student to not talk with the student who was the target of harassment.

While the harassment continued, the district, the suit says, did not take any action to bring the behavior to an end. While the school did an investigation and eventually suspended the bullying student for five days, the suit says the harassment continued.

The student who was the target of all the harassment eventually stopped going to school, out of fear of having to be targeted by the other student.

In an email to MPR News requesting comment on the lawsuit, Nels Onstad, the superintendent of Wabasha-Kellogg Public Schools wrote:

“The District cannot comment specifically on any allegations made by a family given its data privacy obligations under state and federal law, but the District’s top priority is student safety, and the District works proactively to ensure compliance with District policies and law.”

The attorneys for the family that filed the lawsuit could not immediately be reached.