By: Joe Strupp An Indiana woman who had reported being raped in high school five years ago is suing her former school district, claiming the school paper damaged her reputation with stories about her that identified her and questioned her reputation.
The Indianapolis Star reported that the lawsuit, which went to trial on Monday, claims the woman, whose identity was not revealed by the Star, was emotionally harmed by Whiteland High School and the Clark-Pleasant Schools.
?The female student, now an adult, sued the school district for what she describes as emotional injuries resulting from items published about her in the school's newspaper in May 2002,? the Star reported. ?The school's newspaper staff questioned the student's reputation, her attorneys say, following reports by the student that she had been raped.?
"There were three important significant harmful comments," Kevin Betz, who is representing the former student along with attorney Sandra Blevins, told the Star. ?One was that she had the worst reputation, along with the alleged rapist (also a student at Whiteland)?The second one was that she said her favorite song was 'Underneath Your Clothes.' She did not say that."
The third claim printed in the student newspaper began with a true statement, Betz said, but preceeded to another untrue slur.
"It said her ambition was to become a zoologist and one day own her own zoo, which was something she had said," Betz said. But the student publication, called "Smoke Signals," proceeded to speculate in lewd terms about the probable outcome of such an endeavor, Betz told the Star.
The teacher in charge of the student newspaper, Janet Mitchell, believed she had deleted the reference to rape, school officials said in the legal brief filed with the court, according to the Star.
"Either the (computer) software did not accept the change, or a student reinserted the entry after deletion," school officials stated in court documents.
The trial began Monday in Johnson County Superior Court in Franklin, Ind. It is expected to wrap-up Friday.
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