Day 8: School board lawyers use “Kate’s” elementary school report card in an attempt to discredit her

At Rachel Carson Middle School off McLearen Road in Herndon, a dog-eared poster hangs on the wall inside door No. 1. It features the logo of Fairfax County Public Schools and the message, “Keep your School SAFE.” The poster promotes an anonymous “tipline” that the school district has set up as part of “continuing efforts to maintain safe schools.”

But, across the county, in Courtroom 1000 of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the Fairfax County School Board sent youth a very different message on day eight of a civil jury trial, in which a former student, “Kate,” alleges school officials ignored her pleas for help from sexual harassment and rape when she walked the halls at the school 12 years ago.

In a grinding campaign to discredit “Kate,” now 24, the school board turned to unexpected evidence: the young woman’s report card from elementary school.

In “the well,” where the judge, lawyers, staff, and jury sit, Sona Rewari, a partner at Hunton Andrews Kurth, stood at the podium in the front of the courtroom between the jury and the witness stand, where “Kate” sat, attentively. 

Rewari reminded “Kate” that she had told her attorney, Andrew Brenner, about “your interest in science and math.” 

“Take a Defendant Exhibit 118 in the black binder,” Rewari instructed “Kate.”

Turning to the document, “Kate” responded, “Okay.”

“This is your elementary school report card,” Rewari continued. “Your transcript.”

“Okay.”

“So you were at Floris Elementary from second to sixth grade?”

“Yes,” the young woman answered, leaning into her microphone. 

Rewari, who is a mother with a child in the school system, spelled out the initials on Defendant Exhibit 118: “O” was the highest grade, meaning outstanding; “G” was the next highest mark, meaning good; below that was “S” for satisfactory. 

Rewari made her point, “Would you agree that your grade in math was ‘satisfactory,’ whereas your grades in everything else was [sic] ‘outstanding’ or ‘good’?”

As “Kate” leaned forward, the judge, Rossie D. Alston Jr., interjected pointedly from the bench, elevated slightly above the courtroom. “Where are we going with this? Let’s move along in this.”

Rewari doubled down on the school board strategy, “Well, she’s going to say math and science were her strongest subjects.”

Alston stared back at Rewari silently, allowing her to continue.

“Please look at Defense Exhibit 43,” she said. “This is your progress report card for your seventh-grade year.” 

The current and former teachers and staff from Rachel Carson Middle School, on trial as defendants who allegedly ignored the pleas of the former student for help, leaned forward to study a computer screen nearby on the table with their defense lawyer. 

Rewari turned to “Kate” and said, “You had a ‘C’ in math before even the start of the second quarter. You’re claiming your grades in math and science declined.”

Kate noted that the alleged sexual harassment began in October 2011, before the end of the first quarter, which nowadays ends on Nov. 3. 

Furthermore, she said, leaning into the microphone and speaking with a booming voice: “I never also said math and science was what I did best in. They were what I enjoyed most.”

Rewari: “Okay.”

In the audience since day one of the trial, Alex Prout, a D.C. father and a national advocate for victims of sexual assault at an organization, I Have The Right To, quietly shook his head in disbelief several times during the proceedings, saying later outside the courtroom that the trial offers a rare glimpse into tactics used to impugn alleged sexual assault victims, including youth. 

“Usually, these kinds of cases don’t see the light of day,” Prout said, standing outside the courthouse on a quiet street in Alexandria, the new spring’s petunia flowers blooming nearby. “They get buried in settlements with non-disclosure agreements. Thanks to ‘Kate’s’ courage — both as a 12-year-old then and now as a 24-year-old — we get to see the inner workings of institutional betrayal. My hope is that these tactics will be recognized for what they are: victim blaming, victim shaming, victim silencing.”

In the spectator’s gallery for the previous day’s cross-examination of “Kate” by the school board, sat Victor Glasberg, an Alexandria attorney who has filed many lawsuits in the court alleging civil rights violations. He said outside the courtroom, “When I speak with a potential plaintiff about a case, I tell the client I need three things: good facts, good law, and a client whom the jury would want to help. It’s a standard defense protocol to attack what they think is the weakest link in the plaintiff’s case. If they think the facts and the law aren’t on their side, they will go after the plaintiff. Their legal strategy will be to discredit the plaintiff as a believable plaintiff. That’s standard protocol.”

Importantly, the judge has noted several times the jury’s eight members are evaluating whether school officials “got notice” of the alleged sexual harassment and extended “willful disregard” to following federal guidelines, called Title IX protections, requiring school systems to make certain students learn in a safe environment, free of sexual harassment. 

Outside the courtroom, Prout was angry at the school system’s tactics, particularly because they are so typical. “Gaslighting should never be a legal tactic, he said. “I wonder how the taxpayers of Fairfax County and the parents of Fairfax County Public Schools would respond if they witnessed how the administrators, teachers, and staff ‘practice’ their duty of care of our students.”

As the day’s cross-examination continued, Rewari read aloud from a college admission essay that “Kate” had written to Columbia University, getting rejected for admission the first time she applied and gaining admission the second time, graduating eventually with a degree from the school. Rewari then read aloud from a resume that “Kate” had written as a 17-year-old. She then pulled out Defense Exhibit 305, a supposed resume submitted to PwC, the firm previously known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, pouncing on alleged inconsistencies between the former student’s resume and the PwC document.

“Kate” repeatedly insisted that she didn’t recognize the supposed application and that it made no “logical” sense, making her an Army officer, the author of peer-reviewed scientific journal articles, and a student already at Columbia University. 

“I don’t recognize the document,” “Kate” said. 

Rewari noted that the dates didn’t match up with the work that “Kate” had done at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital in New York City. 

“Kate” responded that Rewari hadn’t read the full entry, which also said “first published author” in medical journals.

“That’s insane,” the former student said. 

Rewari responded, “Okay,” and continued with the grilling.

Rewari raised issues with the dates on the PwC document for a Model United Nations program that “Kate” had done.

“This resume that you’re showing makes no sense to me,” said “Kate.” 

When Rewari claimed that “Kate” had purportedly misrepresented herself as a commissioned military officer, “Kate” got visibly angry. Her correct resume noted that she was in ROTC while a student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“I never said I was part of the military ever. I would never do that,” said “Kate.”

In the audience, Proust quietly cheered “Kate” on. “Go for it,” he whispered softly.

Nearby, Susan Young, a Fairfax County mother whose daughter survived alleged sex trafficking while a student in Fairfax County Public Schools, shook her head at the school board’s tactics. 

“Beat a dead horse,” whispered Young, who founded the organization Parent Coalition to End Human Trafficking. She, too, has been sitting in the spectator’s gallery for most of the trial, giving “Kate” hugs of support as she walks out of Courtroom 1000. 

By Day 8, not only had a team of lawyers, including Rewari and Ryan Bates, another lawyer at Hunton Andrews Kurth, tolled another day of billable hours representing the school board, but so too had a former Washington Post reporter, now lawyer, Michael York. Experts estimate that the cost of just the trial appearances and the billable hours could add up to at least $1 million, defending the school board, discrediting “Kate,” and dismissing the tips that former students have testified they gave school administrators – with the bill at millions of dollars for the defense strategy of fighting the former student’s allegations.

As a clerk of the court hammered the gavel on the day’s proceedings, “Kate” stepped into the sunlight, breaking through the clouds on even a drizzly rainy day, and walked across the courtyard with her lawyers, family friends, and supporters. She smiled as an older brother embraced her, drawing his arms gently over her shoulder. 

Inside, Rewari collected her documents, and the Floris Elementary School report card was piled inside.

Asra Q. Nomani is a former Wall Street Journal reporter and a Fairfax County Times contributor. If you have tips about sexual assaults in schools in northern Virginia, please contact her at asra@asranomani.com and @AsraNomani on social media. The B.R. v. Fairfax County School Board et al. starts daily at about 9 a.m. in Courtroom 1000 on the 10th floor of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia at 401 Courthouse Square in Alexandria. The trial is expected to continue until mid-April and typically runs through 4 p.m. or 5 p.m., with lunch breaks around 1 p.m.