On May 1, when Luis Rivera’s 9-year-old daughter was using the bathroom at her public school in the Old Rochester Regional School District in, Massachusetts, a boy who allegedly identifies as transgender pushed open the bathroom stall door and saw her half-undressed. For days, Rivera’s daughter didn’t want to return to school and suffered from anxiety after the traumatic incident.
Making matters worse, the adults at her school refused to stand up for her.
“My daughter had got off the bus like she normally does,” Rivera told IW Features, recalling the day of the alleged incident. “We noticed her eyes were really red… You could tell that she was rubbing them most of the day.”
“My wife had asked her, ‘What’s going on?’” Rivera continued. “‘I miss you guys.’ That was the first thing she said.”
Rivera said it was his daughter’s way of asking for help because she didn’t know how to vocalize or understand the incident, and Rivera quickly asked her what had happened.
His daughter recounted how a boy had entered the girls’ bathroom and “was leering through the cracks in the stall,” according to Rivera. When his daughter noticed the boy’s feet outside the stall door, she called out to him, and he giggled before pretending to leave the bathroom, Rivera said.
But when Rivera’s daughter thought she was alone, the boy reportedly came back to her stall and peered through the gap between the door and frame. Then, the boy pushed the door open to see her sitting “half-dressed on the toilet,” according to Rivera.
“She immediately yelled [and] pushed the door [closed],” Rivera said. “She got dressed and ran back to the classroom, where she was crying.”
When Rivera heard the story, he said he immediately called the school. But despite the promise from the school’s receptionist that the principal would speak with the Rivera family, they never received a response.
The Riveras followed up with an email and finally received a response from the school’s principal, who placed the blame on Rivera’s daughter, saying, “Maybe she left the stall unlocked.” When Rivera’s wife spoke with the principal again, the principal denied that boys were permitted into the girls’ bathroom, again trying to dismiss the incident.
Meanwhile, Rivera’s daughter was still reeling and suffering from anxiety as well as “nausea and sickness in the stomach,” according to Rivera.
“She wasn’t eating correctly for about a week after this happened,” he said. “She didn’t want to get on the bus… I was trying to reassure her that everything’s going to be alright.”
This isn’t the first alleged incident involving this male student. Last year, Rivera said that the boy entered the girls’ bathroom on a field trip. His daughter ran out and would not re-enter the bathroom. When Rivera reported the incident to the school, he said the principal claimed no knowledge of the incident but said she would inquire with the supervising teacher. Rivera never heard back.
Frustrated with the school, Rivera shared his daughter’s story at a school board meeting on May 7.
“I asked them for a full investigation,” he said. Rivera also asked the school board members what policies the district would implement to ensure the safety and privacy of his daughter and other female students.
“I have heard nothing back from them,” he said. “They’re just silent.”
Rivera added that a retired teacher also spoke at the school board meeting, and she told the board that she had warned them about this potential situation arising and was likewise met with inaction at the time.
Today, Rivera’s daughter is using the school’s single-stall bathroom, and he said many other parents have told their daughters to also use the nurse’s office or staff bathrooms. But he said this isn’t a fair solution since it requires the girls to disrupt their school day—all to accommodate one boy.
With the school abandoning his daughter and other female students, Rivera is pursuing his legal options with the Massachusetts Liberty Legal Center (MLLC). In their letter to the Old Rochester Regional School District, they ask for an investigation and appropriate action based on the investigation’s findings, for the boy to be forbidden from using the girls’ bathrooms, and for clear policies protecting sex-separated private spaces in the school going forward.
“There is a Massachusetts law that says that you can’t discriminate in education based on ‘gender identity’ as well as race, sex, religion, but that law has been interpreted by [the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education] to mean you have to open girls’ bathrooms to boys,” MFFC counsel Sam Whiting told IW Features. “We think that that is not an accurate interpretation of the law, but even if it is, state law has to yield to federal law. And we believe that in this situation, Title IX clearly protects the rights of girls to receive an education and not be sexually harassed at school.”
Alongside the letter to the school district, MLLC has also filed an Office for Civil Rights complaint with the Department of Education detailing the alleged sexual harassment.
Fortunately, even as the school has remained silent, Rivera said the Rochester, Massachusetts, community has been supportive.
“I’ve had more friends than I thought I’d ever had,” Rivera said.
While Rivera said some people have told him to simply remove his daughter from the public school, he said that he’s not going to accept defeat or make his daughter upend her social life when the incident was not her fault. Instead, he’s taking a stand for his daughter and all the girls like her in Rochester.
“Somewhere along the line we got lost, and we need to get back to what our human morals [are],” he said.
