Officials at a private school in Englewood mishandled concerns about students’ injuries while a bus monitor was abusing them two years ago and never reported suspicions of abuse to outside authorities, allowing the attacks to continue for months, their parents alleged in a newly filed lawsuit.
Officials at The Joshua School, a school for children with autism and developmental disabilities, continually attributed three non-verbal autistic children’s injuries to self-harm in 2023 and 2024, even while they harbored doubt about that explanation, the parents alleged in the lawsuit filed Dec. 31.
The school’s inaction and incomplete investigation allowed Littleton Public Schools paraprofessional Kiarra Jones to continue to abuse the boys during bus rides for roughly six months before one mother took the investigation into her own hands, according to the complaint filed in Arapahoe County District Court against the school, four members of its leadership team and a teacher.
“By repeatedly sweeping it under the rug, not doing an inquiry into what actually happened and how these kids were coming to have bruises, scratches and marks on their bodies, it allowed the abuse to continue,” said Ciara Anderson, an attorney for the families. “That is exactly what mandated reporting laws are designed to prevent.”
The lawsuit faults the school for what it describes as a practice of investigating abuse suspicions internally, rather than reporting suspicions to outside authorities as required by Colorado’s mandated reporting laws.
Messages seeking comment from school officials were not returned Wednesday. On Thursday evening, Executive Director Cindy Lystad provided a statement that put blame for the abuse on Littleton Public Schools — the school district that was contracted to bus students to and from the school.
“We stand by our teachers and staff who have dedicated their lives to caring for and serving our students,” the statement read.
Educators are required to report any suspected abuse to police or child protective services within 24 hours.
The state’s mandated reporting law was reformed this year to clarify that professionals who suspect abuse cannot ask someone else to report on their behalf. While institutions like schools can create policies around how suspected abuse is handled, those policies cannot deter or impede employees from reporting their suspicions to outside authorities, the new law states.
The reforms were recommended by a task force that convened in response to the death of Olivia Gant, a 7-year-old girl who died in 2017 after her mother medically abused her at Children’s Hospital Colorado. In that case, some of the girl’s caregivers at the hospital suspected abuse but did not alert outside authorities before Olivia died, instead handling the investigation internally, a Denver Post investigation found.
“What we saw in bigger institutions — particularly child care settings, hospitals and schools — is that the institutions developed protocols and said, ‘When you observe child abuse and neglect, you just tell the principal and the principal will take it from there,’ and then it never gets called into the child abuse hotline,” said Stephanie Villafuerte, Colorado’s child protection ombudsman. “The new law is very clear that you cannot delegate your responsibility to report.”
Prior to the , the law was much more vague about delegation, institutional policies and the timeframe for reporting, Villafuerte noted.
Jones, the bus monitor, pleaded guilty this week to abusing the three boys while they were riding the bus to and from The Joshua School. She was hired in August 2023 and the first injury occurred in September 2023, according to the lawsuit.
The school documented a rise in unexplained injuries among the boys in the coming months, but did not thoroughly investigate the source of the injuries, the lawsuit alleges.
In January, one mother discovered bruises on her son’s thighs and questioned whether someone at the school caused the injuries. One teacher at the school noted in a message to a supervisor that the mother was “basically accusing us kindly of sexually abusing” the boy.
The supervisor, Director of Schools Sam Davis, asked where the teacher thought the bruises came from, and accepted the teacher’s suggestion that the boy had injured himself, even though no member of staff had filled out the required documentation of such a self-injury, according to messages included in the complaint.
A few days later, the mother discovered new bruises on her son’s arms and again alerted the teacher, who again brought the matter to Davis, who is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. The teacher told Davis that the injuries were “not really explainable” as self-harm.
“I mean, that’s definitely from someone grabbing him,” the teacher told Davis.
Three days later, after interviewing staff about the injuries, Joshua School officials reached out to Littleton Public Schools to investigate whether the student was injured during his bus ride. The school gave incorrect dates to the district, which resulted in the district reviewing bus surveillance footage from days that did not show abuse, the complaint alleges.
After that cursory investigation turned up nothing, school officials did little else to investigate the students’ injuries, even as the boys frequently received new unexplained injuries through February and March, the lawsuit alleges.
“The school investigated itself, determined, ‘We did nothing wrong, it must be someone else,’ but did nothing further,” Anderson said. “Whereas if it had been reported, child protective services or the police would have done a more thorough investigation.”
In March, after one boy returned home with significant new injuries, his mother called Littleton Public School officials directly — bypassing The Joshua School — and asked to review surveillance footage of the bus ride.
That footage showed Jones elbowing, stomping and punching the boy, and prompted the police investigation. Jones will be sentenced March 18.
Teachers and other mandatory reporters — the legal requirement to report applies to a wide range of professionals — do not need to have proof of abuse to bring forward their suspicions, Villafuerte said. If an injury does not match up with the explanation for the injury, that can be cause to report, she said.
The Sept. 1 changes to the mandatory reporting law have improved the process, she said. But it is important for professionals to understand their obligations, especially since Colorado does not require training for mandated reporters.
“Today I would say the law is in dramatically better shape than it was in the last 30 years,” she said. “…To me it is less about continuing to tweak the law at this time and more about educating… mandated reporters.”
Update: This story was updated Jan. 9 at 6:41 a.m. to include a statement from The Joshua School.
