BOSTON — City councilors and parents blasted Boston Public Schools for concealing thousands of sexual assault, misconduct, and bullying cases that involved abuse committed against students by their classmates, and at least one BPS staffer.

The student sex accounts were a hot topic at a City Council Education committee hearing on Tuesday, following an explosive report Friday by Contrarian Boston written by a freelance reporter who had the public records released to him following a three-year court battle against the city and its public school system.

The reporter, Colman M. Herman, who has previously written for the Herald, laid out in graphic detail excerpts from more than 2,000 student-on-student sexual misconduct cases that he said the records show occurred at BPS over a six-year period, 2018-19 and 2023-24.

Records show cases involving a range of K-12 students. One bathroom incident, for example, involved two first-grade boys who, per an investigation, “may have penetrated the female student,” also in grade 1. Records show that the misconduct occurred in schools and on school property including buses, per the report.

Councilor Ed Flynn said he was “troubled” by the data, which also outlined requests for oral sex from male to female students, and the steps he said BPS took to cover it up. He called for a public release of the student sex records.

“What I’m asking for is BPS to be transparent,” Flynn said. “I do think the public needs to know exactly what’s happening in the Boston Public School system. Hiding data doesn’t do anything but allow it to continue.”

Flynn called for a community-led task force to address the apparent widespread sexual misconduct occurring between students in the public school system.

“If we’re hiding data, the people that are responsible for these issues really have lost the credibility to lead,” Flynn said. “I have lost confidence when there are 2,000 sexual assaults against students, and we’re covering that information up.”

Perhaps equally troubling were the first-hand accounts shared by BPS parents at Tuesday’s hearing. Parents shared how the district’s response to sexual assaults and bullying committed against their children had been woefully inadequate, so much so that some were forced to pull their kids out of the school system.

“During school hours, my child was forcefully raped by a BPS staff member during school, in which she reported the incident, which should have been dealt with immediately,” BPS parent Monica Murchison said.

“Protocol should have been followed — police being called, a 51A being filed, me being contacted as the parent in the incident report because that is BPS policy. None of that happened. My child’s incident was swept under the rug.

“I had no knowledge about it, so I continued to send my child to school every single day until she eventually had a meltdown because I was putting her into the arms of the abuser,” Murchison added.

When she did eventually find out, Murchison said the school district began to retaliate against her when she sought more information from BPS than what her child had told her.

She said she was trespassed from her daughter’s school, and 51A, or child abuse and neglect reports, were filed against her. She said things got so bad after she tried to speak out that she pulled her daughter out of the school system. She was forced to leave her catering job to home school her daughter, Murchison said.

“The minute that we demand these answers, as we should, as parents, we’re met with retaliation tactics,” Murchison said. “We shouldn’t be met with resistance from a school.”

Another parent, Tia Washington, said her 8-year-old daughter had been physically assaulted and bullied on “numerous occasions.” She said “there was sexual misconduct on her bus two years in a row.”

“This has a long-lasting impact on the children and the parents,” Washington said. “Of course, we’re all parents, and we know what it feels like when we want to protect our babies and to feel powerless, for the transparency not to be there, for you not to receive the support when you’re taking all the proper steps and channels. It’s very hard.”

Washington added, “We’re not the anomaly. Those of us who are talking today, we are not the exception to the rule. This is happening. It’s very pervasive and concerning, and we need to address it.”

Councilor Julia Mejia, who chaired the day’s hearing, cited a survey that showed 18% of student respondents said that it was “quite or extremely difficult” to get help from an adult if they were bullied this past school year.

“Students continue to report feeling unsafe and worrying about violence in their schools,” Mejia said. “This needs to change.”

BPS administrators testified that they were angered to hear about the ways the district had failed the parents taking part in the hearing, but while they committed to taking steps to improve reporting mechanisms and response, they mentioned the importance of protecting student and family data in sex assault and bullying cases.

“I also want to personally just say that I’m sorry for their experiences and what they went through because just hearing the testimony just made my blood boil to know that we fell short in some of these situations, and our policies and procedures weren’t effective there,” said Sam DePina, senior deputy superintendent of operations.

Addressing the Boston public more widely with schoolchildren who have been “subject to any sexual harassment, bullying, sexual misconduct,” DePina said, “it also makes me boil to know that our system has failed you, and we are trying to do better, and we mean to do better.”

“I also want to just state that the response that we have been working towards over the last couple years has just gotten stronger, based on the collaboration that we do do with families and parents,” DePina said.

He said the district is in the process of updating its code of conduct, which is done every three years.

Councilor John FitzGerald said the public has a different perception.

“I do just want to say that I heard it today, and I’ve heard it before in relation to BPS, and it’s the comment that things get swept under the rug,” FitzGerald said. “I hear that used a lot with BPS. So I just encourage you guys to understand that that is the image that is out there.”

Councilor Erin Murphy said, “BPS cannot keep hiding behind student privacy to avoid accountability.”

_____

©2026 MediaNews Group, Inc. Visit at bostonherald.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.