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MIFFLIN INCIDENT STEEPED IN CHAOS
Police want to charge 3 students in attack on 16-year-old girl
Published: Friday, April 15, 2005
By Bill Bush
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Three Mifflin High School students should face charges after an attack that has drawn national attention, Columbus police said yesterday.

Two boys should be charged with delinquency counts of rape, detective Mary C. Harrison said. A third student, an 18-year-old who videotaped the March 9 attack on a 16-year-old girl, should be charged with pandering obscenity, she said.

Detectives will make their case to Franklin County prosecutors Tuesday.

Police said spring break and conflicting stories slowed their pace, but witnesses responding to a Columbus Public Schools probe reveal a harrowing story:

It was an important day at Mifflin.

Students were taking state proficiency tests, and two members of the Downtown brass were visiting for a meeting with the principal, two assistant principals and about five teachers.

Assistant Principals Richard Watson and Vincent Clarno had been ducking in and out of the noon meeting to grapple with problems at the 800-student school on the Northeast Side.

Already that day, school administrators had investigated a report of a concealed weapon and an assault on a Somali student.

Adding to the problems, the Columbus police officer permanently stationed at Mifflin was away from the building for training. On such days, no replacement officer is sent.

At about 1:45 p.m., the meeting was disturbed by a call for help over the administrators’ walkie-talkies.

All hell had broken loose in the auditorium, and a 16-year-old, developmentally disabled girl was at the center of it. Watson and Clarno excused themselves from the meeting and joined teachers scrambling to figure out what had happened.

First-year Principal Regina Crenshaw decided to continue with the meeting, about bell schedules and curriculum.

The initial reports about what had happened in the auditorium were ugly. A group of girls had come screaming to the door of special-education teacher Lisa Upshaw-Haider.

They “told me that I needed to go to the auditorium to help the girl because boys were (having sex with) her, and there was a line of boys'’ waiting to get oral sex, Upshaw-Haider said.

Marshall Cobb, a Mifflin safety employee who had radioed for help, had seen students running through the halls “trying to observe some act.'’

He came across the girl, who “appeared to be very upset'’ but initially told him, “Nothing happened to me,'’ Cobb said.

Another girl said she had seen a boy punch the victim in the head and force her to her knees to perform oral sex.

On his way to the auditorium, Clarno broke up a fight. One of the boys was mad that the other had “snitched'’ on his cousin, who was involved in the incident, Clarno said.

Other students were telling another special-education teacher, Julia Calvario, that a student had videotaped the incident.

Told of this, Cobb and Watson immediately set out to get the tape, in part because they feared it would be posted on the Internet.

The girl, who has a severe speech impediment, was dazed, confused and crying, Upshaw-Haider said.

In the school office, no later than 2:15 p.m., Calvario finally was having some luck getting information out of the girl:
# There were four boys.
# They grabbed her by the arm and led her behind the curtain of the auditorium stage.
# She told them to stop, but they hit her in the head and told her to be quiet.
# Two made her have oral sex.

At this point, each teacher and administrator at Mifflin who was aware of this allegation was required under Ohio law to immediately phone the police or Franklin County Children Services.

None did.

“All I could think about was (the girl’s) inability to verbally articulate her thoughts because she is so low-functioning,'’ Upshaw-Haider wrote. “I could not get out of my mind the fact that (the girl) could not tell her side of the story, unlike those boys who were denying their involvement.'’

District officials kept in the dark

Officials found the videotape, which “showed sexual activity involving (the girl) and a male taking place on the stage of the auditorium,'’ Cobb wrote.

“The video we viewed,'’ Watson said, “showed no force or coercion.'’

The boy’s face was not visible, but officials questioned a suspect who was wearing similar clothes. He denied involvement and implicated several other students.

Upshaw-Haider knew the girl’s father and took it upon herself to phone him on her cell phone. Clarno saw him in the building about 2:10.

Clarno, at 29 the youngest member of the school administration, decided it was time to involve the principal.

He interrupted Crenshaw’s meeting, asked her to come to the door, and quietly informed her of the dramatic episode that had unfolded in the center of her school.

He told her “to come with me, because we have a crisis going on,'’ Clarno wrote.

But Crenshaw returned to the meeting — which might have continued another half-hour, said district executive Jaqueline Ralls, who was there.

“This is absolutely outrageous,'’ Superintendent Gene Harris said yesterday. “I would have gone back and said, ‘Look, we’re done with this meeting.’ ‘’

Harris has begun the process to fire Crenshaw.

District policy called for Crenshaw to inform Ralls — the head of all Columbus high schools — of reports of serious violence. But Ralls said yesterday that she and Crenshaw were together for about another 10 minutes before Ralls left the meeting early. She left the building, not knowing what had happened.

Pete Maneff, the head of vocational centers, who also was at the meeting, couldn’t be reached yesterday.

Delays, indecision and second guessing

“The father arrived a minute or two after I entered Mr. Watson’s office,'’ said one unsigned statement, which appears to be from Assistant Principal Suzie Retterer-Helfrich. “When Mr. Watson began giving details, it appeared to me as though the father had no idea what had reportedly happened, and Mr. Watson was proceeding as if he did.

“I excused myself and asked the dad if he knew why he’d been called, and he said, ‘No, a teacher called and said to get here right away.’ ‘’

Watson wrote that his main concern at that time was making sure the boys suspected in the attack did not leave the school. At 2:30 p.m., the four suspects could have simply been driven away on district school buses or in private cars.

“I introduced myself and sat the father next to his daughter, continuing to ask for information because I know the end of the day is near,'’ Watson said.

“As I relayed the current information, he asked if the police had been called,'’ Watson said. “I said no.'’

The father told Watson, “I want to press charges,'’ according to Upshaw-Haider. “Let’s get the police.'’

He pointed to the phone and motioned for Watson to call.

“Mr. Watson said that he shouldn’t call the police because the dispatch would go over the radio,'’ then looked to the others to support him, Upshaw-Haider wrote. Her account continued:

The father said, “I will call on my cell phone, and Watson repeated what he said earlier. . . .

“At some point, I informed (the father) that there was a videotape of the incident. Mr. Watson’s eyes bucked as I mentioned it.'’

Watson’s statement said, “Calvario and I told him to call the police, not 911. Our fear was that a news channel might tape his daughter and cause her further mental trauma.'’

Sometime before 3 p.m., Crenshaw had finally finished her meeting and joined her administrators in dealing with the reported attack.

“Ms. Crenshaw told the father come back tomorrow at 7:45 a.m. and our police officer would handle this,'’ Watson wrote. “You will be happy with the results.'’

At some point, the father called police and went to wait in the school lobby.

Because of a mix-up, the cruisers apparently were dispatched to Mifflin Middle School instead of Mifflin High School, and the father eventually went home.

The police later came to his house and arrived at the school at 5:20 p.m., Cobb said. All the administrators had gone home.

“We spoke as a team in the conference room sometime after the father had left the building,'’ Watson said. “We spoke of the events of the day and Ms. Crenshaw abruptly concluded the meeting and left.'’

As Clarno was driving home, “I was uncomfortable with how everything played out,'’ he wrote. Around 8 p.m., “unable to cope'’ with his thoughts, he returned to the school to review his notes.

“That’s when I was told by one of the custodians that the police had been at the school with the parent and they were walking around the cafeteria and auditorium area.'’

Clarno called Crenshaw at home and said, “We need to revisit how we handled our situation.'’

At about 10 p.m., as Ralls was getting ready for bed, Crenshaw called to tell her what had happened.

Later, a district investigator asked the three assistant principals about their thinking.

Didn’t you hear the girl’s story, they were asked.

“Yes, but I did not hear everything she said,'’ Retterer-Helfrich answered. “This victim has a habit of wiping her face with her shirt, which may explain her injury.'’

Did anybody think about calling the nurse or a counselor for the girl?

“No,'’ Watson answered. “The victim was in a safe area and Mrs. H. may have mentioned the emergency-room treatment.'’

Why did you not call the police?

“Mrs. Crenshaw said we were not calling the police,'’ Clarno said, “and that we would let (the assigned school officer) deal with the situation, since he is more familiar with our students.'’