Kirkland community would have benefited from release of more documents in assault case | Editorial

Published 3:02 pm Wednesday, February 11, 2015

The alleged sexual assault that occurred at Juanita High School (JHS) in October has rocked the Kirkland community. Prosecutors have charged five teens with attempting to sodomize a special-needs student. Ultimately, the justice system will determine the facts. Most people can’t imagine what would drive teen boys to commit the alleged acts. Many people have expressed a feeling of shame for just being associated with the Juanita High School community during the past five months, even going so far as expressing how the incident makes them feel unsafe sending their children to public schools in the area.

From the information we have, the school district and the police acted swiftly and correctly.

However, the story has hurt the community’s reputation. The Daily Mail in the UK, the New York Daily News and many other media sources outside of the Puget Sound area have reported on the incident. Some of them have even cast a stereotype about JHS. The Kirkland Reporter has tried to paint a broader picture of the incident and the reaction of the community.

All of the media sources outside of Kirkland wrote their stories from press releases or the recently released charging papers. As a journalist, obtaining that was about as easy as opening up your email and reading. But for us, this story was too important to stop at a press release.

The incident has not been easy to cover for the Reporter’s editorial staff of two. The subject matter is not easy to write about. Our interest in this story, like all crime stories, is to present clear relevant information to the community. Those facts, we hope, will help you and your family make decisions in the future to keep you safe. We received many phone calls and emails from anonymous sources with good information, allowing us to ask the right questions and put together six stories.

We were also hearing inaccurate information in the community. The rumors in a case like this can be unfairly damaging to the reputations of those involved. They can also be dangerous for witnesses and the victim. Most of the stories written this week were from the charging papers. We attempted to go further and give context where it is needed.

The Reporter’s story went further. A head coach who, despite district policy, risked his job to call the victim to check on his well-being. The inadequate policies for supervising after-school activities, which need to be changed. And the visceral reaction of parents and students to one of the worst cases of bullying in the district’s history.

We have used every resource at our disposal to obtain the facts in this case short of taking the issue to a judge. We ultimately decided not to go down that road as it would have taken so much time it may have ultimately been irrelevant. The Kirkland Reporter submitted nearly 20 records requests with the Lake Washington School District (LWSD), the city of Kirkland and King County Prosecutor’s Office. For perspective, we submit two or three for the average investigative piece. Most of the requests were denied, including requests for investigation documents from the school district and the city.

LWSD officials told us they were unable to release any information because of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). The city of Kirkland also denied our request and our appeal, despite the fact it could have redacted the suspects’ names or any part of the reports, releasing some information that could have cleared up many damaging and potentially dangerous rumors circulating in the community.

As journalists we have to respect the idea of innocent until proven guilty. When we received the charging documents from the prosecutor’s office, the names of the suspects were not redacted. Nothing was redacted. We still chose not to print the suspects’ names. It is journalism ethics, not the law, that governs our actions. However, obtaining information on this case should not have taken this long. It is one thing to protect those accused of a crime but the community, and its concerns, also deserve consideration.