The family of an 8-year-old girl in Indiana plans to sue an Indianapolis suburb after she was sexually assaulted at a summer camp by another girl despite ongoing concerns raised by her mother, an attorney claims.
The young victim endured “physical, mental and sexual assaults” from a 7-year-old girl during the two months she attended a summer camp hosted by Carmel-Clay Parks & Recreation in Carmel, attorney Tim Stoesz told WXIN.
“Over the course of the summer, the little girl had made comments to her mom about some things [that] were happening at camp,” Stoesz said. “There was allegations of touching, allegations of pants being pulled down, allegations of forced behavior.”
The alleged abuse began in late May at Creekside Middle School, prompting the girl’s mother to contact camp workers about what her daughter told her. But camp workers were negligent in protecting the girl and didn’t even take steps to make sure it didn’t happen again, Stoesz said.
“I think they failed to properly supervise the children and allowed incidents to continue to happen after they had been given notice that something was happening,” he said. “I don’t want to characterize it as a cover-up, but I don’t think that the proper write-ups were done.”
The girl’s mother told the Indianapolis Star she contacted camp and parks department workers several times to relay concerns that her daughter was being harassed and bullied by the little girl. The mother said her daughter told her she was later followed into a bathroom by her alleged tormentor, who locked the door behind her before pulling down her pants and shoving her daughter’s head into her crotch area to simulate oral sex.
The victim’s mother said the girl then pulled down her daughter’s pants before touching her inappropriately.
The mother said the other child also watched her daughter use the restroom several times and exposed herself to her daughter. The other girl was never removed from the $1,500 camp, she said, causing her to remove her daughter from the camp before contacting the Department of Child Services, the Indianapolis Star reports.
A police report obtained by the newspaper via an open records request shows that camp workers contacted in Carmel police on July 6. Six days later, the case was closed after investigators found no criminal violations.
The girl’s mother, who is seeking $700,000 in damages per incident of negligence, said she was also told by the state’s Department of Child Services that it found no conclusive evidence that her daughter was abused or that the city of Carmel was negligent. A spokesman for the agency declined to comment, citing confidentiality laws, while a spokeswoman for the city of Carmel declined to comment on pending litigation, the Indianapolis Star reports.
The alleged victim continues to receive therapy and takes medication for night terrors and other afflictions after the alleged abuse. Symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder are “clearly there,” according to the family’s attorney. The girl has also started becoming overly concerned with puberty and chews her fingers, her mother said.
“The trauma that my daughter experienced this summer has become a force of its own,” the girl’s mother told WXIN in a statement. “Every aspect of her life and our family life has been altered. Someone needs to answer to these atrocities and make sure that no other child and family have to go through what we are enduring.”