Court documents only refer to her as Q.B. When she was 3 years old, a 15-year-old student molested her aboard a Palm Beach County school bus. Nine years later, the state of Florida is finally getting around to paying restitution for the neglect of the bus driver and attendant as well as the school district.
Everything about this case is a mess. Let’s start with the 2007 crime: J.C. Carter, the youth charged with sexual battery, had emotional and behavioral disabilities, and was considered by the school district to be severely emotionally disturbed.
Q.B., who lacked basic verbal capacities due to her developmental delays, was unable to speak up on her bus ride home when Carter left his assigned seat and began to assault her. The attack lasted for 15 minutes.
When the adults in charge of the bus, a driver and attendant, eventually discovered what Carter was doing to Q.B., they put an end to it. Yet, the circumstances that allowed the assault to go on for as long as it did subsequently got the pair fired.
The bus attendant, Grenisha Williams, was convicted of child neglect in 2009 and put on probation. Williams later testified at the lawsuit hearing. It took a Florida jury 15 minutes to award Q.B.’s family $1.7 million in restitution. Here is where the plot thickens.
The attack was rape. The Palm Beach County school board never denied this fact and admitted liability. They implemented a new policy, declaring that young children would no longer ride buses with older ones.
School board attorneys argued, though, that Q.B. was far too young and too mentally disabled to understand the full impact of what Carter did to her. So, therefore, they never approved to compensate Q.B. for the trauma she endured. The jury thought differently.
However, in 2007, state law stipulated that government agencies could only be forced to pay $100,000 for injuries caused by their carelessness. This is known as sovereign immunity, a colonial holdover that claims that the King can do no wrong.
Q.B.’s attorneys asserted that this cap barely covered the court costs and necessary counseling. Both parties involved ultimately settled on $600,000.
Yet to get this compensation, Q.B.’s attorneys had to convince the Florida Legislature to lift the cap. It took almost a decade, but the government eventually yielded an inch to help Q.B. out.
A bipartisan bill, Relief of Q.B. by the Palm Beach County School Board, was recently introduced by state Sen. Joseph Abruzzo, which, if passed into law, will bring an end to this whole ordeal for Q.B., who is now 12. The bill has moved to appropriations.
