Stanton student sues Duval Schools over sexual assault on bus | Jacksonville Today

A Student Transportation of America school bus. | News4Jax
Published on August 10, 2026 at 4:02 pm
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The family of a freshman who was sexually assaulted by another student on a school bus in 2024 is suing Duval County Public Schools

The federal civil rights lawsuit alleges the district and other defendants failed to protect the girl, a student at Stanton College Preparatory School, from escalating sexual harassment and assaults on the bus — despite “known systemic failures in preventing, classifying, reporting, investigating, and remediating sexual misconduct.”

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The other defendants include Superintendent Christopher Bernier, two Stanton administrators, one school rer

A district spokesperson declined to comment. 

“Because this is pending litigation, any response from the district will be provided through the appropriate judicial proceedings,” Sonya Duke-Bolden wrote in an email to Jacksonville Today

The attorney representing the plaintiffs, Christina Lawrence-Moser, has represented several former students in their claims against the district regarding Douglas Anderson School of the Arts. Moser also declined to comment

According to the complaint, Bernier is named as a defendant “based on his personal knowledge of and deliberate indifference to” failures in the system

The federal court filings say the series of three assaults happened in September 2024 aboard a bus operated by Student Transportation of America, one of the district’s two contracted bus operators

The third assault, which the complaint calls the “most egregious,” occurred at the front of the bus in close proximity to the driver. 

The complaint says the girl, who was “seated and unable to get away” from the boy, “verbally objected” and told him the bus had security cameras, but he did not stop. In a written complaint a few weeks later, she described the assault as “the worst 7-10 minutes of my life.”

The family has reviewed security camera footage of the assaults, according to the court documents. The footage shows that during the third incident, the driver “looked into the interior mirror more than once, glanced toward the perpetrator at least once,” and, after retrieving a water bottle for the boy and handing it to him, “looked directly at the perpetrator while the assault was ongoing.”

After the girl gave detailed written reports of the assaults, the suit claims, the district minimized her claims, delayed access to evidence, and failed to provide Title IX re

The suit alleges that Stanton administrators treated the student’s “trauma-driven academic decline” as an “ordinary performance problem.” 

The complaint also alleges that the district was more responsive to the perpetrator’s mother, who “expressed concern” to the school about the girl sitting near her son. Stanton administrators then required the girl to sign a “stay away agreement” without the involvement of her parents, and required her to sit at the front of the bus in the area where the assault had occurred

District officials initially directed the boy’s offense to be reduced to a juvenile civil citation, but after the family objected, the State Attorney’s Office brought criminal charges. He ultimately pleaded guilty to felony battery

The bus operator, STA, faced criticism earlier this year after an adult boarded a bus headed to Riverside High School and touched a student inappropriately. Duval Schools renewed its contract with STA earlier this summer

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Source: jaxtoday.org