Boston schools grappled with thousands of allegations of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault by students over a six-year period, records show
These are just a few of the 2,015 reports of student-on-student sexual misconduct that occurred at Boston Public Schools over a six-year span (2018-2019 to 2023-2024) — documents that BPS officials have done their best to keep from seeing the light of day.
The number of reports would have been significantly higher were it not for two factors. First, during the COVID-19 pandemic, BPS ceased in-school classes for about a year. Second, as explained later in this report, incidents of sexual misconduct are greatly underreported for a multitude of reasons.
The first five years of records were secured only after a lawsuit was filed against Boston Public Schools in Suffolk Superior Court by a freelance reporter represented for the initial portion of the litigation by the Pioneer Institute. The reports for the sixth year were obtained in response to a public records request filed subsequent to the conclusion of the lawsuit. (BPS officials demanded $1,600 for school years 2024-2026, which the freelance reporter was not in a position to pay.)
