Appalling audio catches D.C. school official mocking ninth grader who'd just reported sexual assault

In June 2017, an unnamed high school freshman, with her mother by her side, told officials at the school in Northwest Washington that she’d been sexually assaulted in a boy’s bathroom. At first, Roosevelt High School principal Aqueelha James said all the right things. 

“I’m here to support and be of assistance,” James told the girl and her mother. The principal promised a swift and thorough investigation. “I don’t like the idea that your daughter has been assaulted sexually,” James said. “It is a crime.”

It’s what Principal James said after the girl and her mother left the room that’s placed the school administrator in the center of a civil rights lawsuit, filed this week against the District of Columbia.