Former Myers Park High School student Jane Doe on Thursday filed an appeal over a case alleging Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools mishandled her sexual assault report.
Doe, named that way in court documents to protect her identify, and her attorney Laura Dunn filed the appeal to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. A jury ruled against Doe last month, saying she didn’t prove Myers Park High, CMS and police mishandled her report of sexual assault on campus in 2015. The appeal refers to court decisions dating back to August.
U.S. District Judge Robert Conrad dismissed claims of two individual defendants Bradley Leak, the school resource officer at the time of the alleged assault, and Anthony Perkins, a CMS employee at the time, before the case went to a trial.
Conrad also dismissed the city of Charlotte from the suit during the trial.
After a weeklong trial, a federal jury in Charlotte decided Jan. 20 Doe and her attorneys had not proven CMS and Myers Park High had been “deliberately indifferent” to her assault claims. That’s an essential element of proving discrimination claims such as Doe’s that are filed under Title IX, a federal law prohibiting sexual discrimination by schools or educational programs receiving federal money.
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools said it had no comment Friday when asked about the appeal.