In Rock County, a student accused another of rape. In court, her school picked a side.

ORFORDVILLE, Wis. — It wasn’t until Hannah Engel was laying in a hospital bed after attempting to take her own life at 14 that her parents and doctors learned what had set the high school freshman on a path of spiraling depression.

She told doctors that two months earlier in March 2018, another student at Parkview High School had raped her twice. The two students had been in his basement watching TV, she said; he had wanted to do more.

“I keep telling him no, that I’m not ready, that I don’t want to do this.”

Later, she tried to explain why it took her so long to say something.

In police records obtained by News 3 Investigates, a criminal investigation corroborated parts of her story. But because her reporting came months after the assault–a common factor in sexual assault reporting–the investigation didn’t get the physical evidence needed for a criminal rape charge.

Nearly three years later, instead, her perpetrator would be convicted of 4th degree sexual assault and sentenced to probation without a requirement to register as a sex offender. (News 3 Investigates is not naming the perpetrator because he would go on to be convicted of a lesser assault charge than rape.)

While disappointed with the results, it wasn’t the criminal investigation that Hannah and her family said left them shortchanged and unsupported: it was her school district.

Sexual harassment at school

At school, Hannah says she had faced constant harassment and bullying from her perpetrator’s friends about the assault.

“Older students from his class would come up and make jokes about it,” Hannah said. “They would say “Oh, he’s gonna come get you, he’s gonna do it again.”

When she reported the harassment to school officials, she was told that she could spend the day in the office to escape. Beyond that, Hannah says nothing was done. She was told to sit in a windowless room used to discipline students who receive in-school suspension. Most school staff, her step-father said, weren’t told about the pending criminal assault investigation.

“When I was at Parkview, I dreaded waking up in the morning. I dreaded going to school. I quit basketball which I had played for years and I just, I gave up,” Hannah said. “I didn’t have anybody on my side. I didn’t have anybody sticking up for me.”

After a year of harassment and bullying, Hannah decided to leave Parkview High School. She spent the rest of her high school career jumping between private and online schools.

“Even still today, I think about what I lost. I had to leave the school where I grew up and all of that. I didn’t get the normal high school experience that every other student deserves to get.”

School says it met legal obligations

Federal law requires schools to offer sexual assault victims support and protection from harassment in cases like this. Yet Hannah and her family said nothing of the sort was provided–when students harassed her and accused her of lying, the school did nothing.

Through their lawyer, however, officials in the Parkview School District said they’d fulfilled their legal obligations.

“District policy has long required that the District respond promptly to complaints of bullying and harassment, stop the conduct if occurring, and support students affected by it. It saddened the District to learn last year that one of its former students did not feel supported at school,” their statement to News 3 Investigates read.

The district hired independent legal counsel to review its response to Hannah’s allegations, attorney Tess O’Brien-Heinzen wrote on behalf of the school. The review found the district had met its obligations under state and federal law, but “continues to take steps” in the aftermath to strengthen its processes.

When asked what those steps were, the district didn’t respond.

A step further: In court, school official picked a side

Student complaints that school administrators have mishandled sexual assault and harassment within the school body aren’t necessarily new. In neighboring Dane County, News 3 Investigates has reported another high school student’s story of assault and school neglect in Oregon. In Madison, students have publicly rallied against administrators after some said they had gone unsupported in the wake of sexual assault.

But Parkview’s administration went a step further: in a case where a now-former student had accused another of rape, school officials would not ultimately remain neutral.

By the time the case made it to court, court records show the student–now in college–had been accused and charged again. In both Hannah’s and the other case, he was charged with a 4th-degree sexual assault, a charge that covers unwanted sexual contact. He pleaded no contest to both and was convicted.

In 2020, Hannah was watching a livestream of his sentencing. She was shocked as she heard Parkview High School principal Mary Stelter read a letter in court defending his character. 

In the letter, printed on Parkview High School letterhead, Stelter described the student as “a young man dedicated to being the best he can be,” and praised him for being a part of her “smile file” for all of the positive interactions she’d had with him. She mentioned his good GPA and that he played four different sports in high school. Stelter ended the letter noting that he had “only been disciplined on two occasions during the 2016-17 school year, both of which were documented as minor behavior infractions.” 

“Whether it was in the hall, lunchroom, or classroom, [the student] would go out of his way to greet me with a smile and ask how I was doing; as an administrator that is not always the case,” Stelter wrote in her letter to the judge prior to his sentencing, obtained by News 3 Now through public records. She wrote in closing, “He has always been a polite, respectful young man.”

“I was kind of shocked, honestly,” Hannah said. “As a woman and a mother and a principal of a school, she took sides and you just, you can’t do that.”

The Parkview School District did not address questions in their statement about the principal’s letter taking sides in a sexual assault case where one Parkview High student accused another.

K-12 schools frequently mishandle Title IX requirements

Out of a desire to move on and close a painful chapter, the family chose not to lodge complaints at the time with the state or federal government about how the district had handled Hannah’s reports of harassment. As a result, there’s no record of government investigations into how Title IX was applied in her case.

In 13 Title IX-focused federal school investigations in Wisconsin since 2013, the U.S. Department of Education found either violations or the school agreed to resolutions before the investigation was completed. Nine of them were in K-12 schools.

A NBC News investigation two years ago found hundreds of lawsuits from families in similar situations across the country, suing K-12 schools under claims they violated Title IX requirements for their children.

For decades, victim advocates say, the federal law has gone misapplied or ignored in K-12 education while higher education gets most of the spotlight.

“K-12 is a bit more stuck in the dark ages,” said Amy Bogost, a civil rights attorney specializing in Title IX law (and a UW System regent). “When you’re a high school student, Title IX focuses–it’s supposed to focus on the victim.”

Federal law and Parkview High’s own policies for sexual harassment incidents require protection plans be put in place for a victim to ensure their access to education remains safe. While the district maintained in its statement that no state or federal laws were violated, Hannah and her family say they went ignored.

“After I told them about the harassment they just said, ‘We’ll look into it and we’ll get back to you’ and they never did,” Hannah noted. “Nobody checked in. Nobody asked me, like, ‘Hey, what can we do for you? Where can we make this a safer experience for you?’”

Her step-dad described the school’s response to the family’s repeated inquiries.

“Basically the answer was, ‘It’s a small school. They’re gonna bump into each other. There’s nothing we can do about it. If she’s uncomfortable, she can come spend the day in the office,’” Ryan said.

The law requires schools to conduct an investigation into any harassment reported by a student related to a sexual assault, according to Appleton-based attorney and Title IX investigator Lora Zimmer.

“It needs to be prompt and reliable and impartial,” Zimmer said. “That would be the baseline requirement.”

While privacy laws prevent a school from disclosing details about those investigations to the public, experts say the school is required to let victims know an investigation is happening. If the Parkview School District did an investigation, Hannah’s family said, they didn’t know about it.

Beyond that, the law requires victims be provided a support network that includes the ability to change schedules and continue classes while avoiding the perpetrator — measures Hannah said she asked for but weren’t fully made available to her.

“The high school needs to support that student in any way to ensure that they have access to an education and they finish their education … without further harm and harassment,” Bogost said. “They have to make sure that the victim feels comfortable coming to school. They have the right to change schedules.”

On social media, another case sparked public outcry–and school officials fought back

In June, a former student and the son of a current Parkview School Board member was arrested for possession of child pornography.

The arrest reignited another controversy at the school four years ago, when the same student had been accused of intentionally taping choir girls while they changed in a dressing room. A police investigation at the time didn’t lead to charges and didn’t establish whether the taping was intentional; investigation records obtained by News 3 Investigates noted the video had been already deleted by the student’s mother. The school removed him from the show choir, witnesses in police records said, and the investigation closed.

Some families at the school felt enough wasn’t done. When the former student was arrested this year, it unleashed a torrent of emotion online.

The arrest prompted Hannah to take to Facebook to share her own assault story, and call out what she saw as another example of Parkview’s protection of perpetrators and lack of support for victims. Her post went locally viral.

Some of the nearly-200 comments on her post included multiple allegations that the school had ignored harassment and bullying for years and has a culture of protecting abusers. 

In response, a Facebook account matching the name and photos of Zach Knutson, the president of the school board, wrote a post on Facebook. Screenshots were shared with News 3 Investigates.

“Parkview was, is, and always will be a great school district,” he said. “To hear it being falsely attacked is insulting to everyone who works so hard to honor it.” He went on to address Hannah’s post, although not naming her directly, calling her allegations false and saying “it’s a select few who dwell on life’s challenges and somehow those challenges were insurmountable because of the school district.”

It’s just an example for Hannah of how far there is left to go.

“Even when you have the court case to prove it, which is public record by a government website, people are still gonna sit there and call you a liar and say you made it up,” Hannah said. “My sister goes there now. She’s 14 and I feel if I don’t speak up now, what if it happens to her?”