Weeks after reaching a deal with the federal Office of Civil Rights over its mishandling of sexual harassment cases, the Palo Alto Unified School District is catching heat for allowing a student to continue attending classes despite being found guilty of a felony charge of forced oral copulation.

The 17-year-old Palo Alto High School student athlete also had been accused in another sexual assault incident roughly a year later involving another girl.

The two victims told The Daily News they found little justice in juvenile court and want the district to expel the student or, at the very least, prohibit him from participating in sports, the prom and other extracurricular activities.

The victims question a system in which the courts said a perpetrator committed a felony yet gave him only probation, the police department did not notify the school of its criminal investigation, and a school district did not expel a student who committed sexual assault.

“When you assaulted me, you might as well have taken my life, my sense of self, my security and thrown it across the room,” the first victim wrote in a victim impact statement she read aloud in court in January. “Even now, over a year later, there’s a sort of empty hole inside of me that swallows me whole on my worst days and just kind of sits there, gaping, on my best days.”

The victims also say the district should have notified the greater Palo Alto school community that a felon walks among unsuspecting students on campus.

The assailant’s family did not return calls for comment. The family’s attorney, Stephanie Rickard, said she’s precluded in most cases from discussing cases involving juveniles, noting that their files are confidential in a system committed to rehabilitation, not punishment.

“This is something that happened when he was 15,” Rickard told this newspaper on the day of a restitution hearing in April. “I think it’s detrimental to him to have his whole situation, background, life out there.”

Rickard said her client is appealing the felony finding.

Superintendent Max McGee has declined to respond to this newspaper’s repeated inquiries and instead referred questions to a district spokesman, Communications Officer Jorge Quintana.

In an April 26 official response to early queries by The Daily News, Quintana said: “The district was aware of the allegation in October of 2016, looked into it, and administrators took appropriate disciplinary action.”

Citing the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, Quintana said he could not disclose how the student was disciplined. Like student grades and attendance, disciplinary records are protected information, he said.

Late Thursday night, in response to a KTVU-TV report on the case, McGee issued a statement to district parents and staff that read:

“By now I am certain you are familiar with news media coverage regarding accusations of sexual assault against a Palo Alto High School student. As both your superintendent and a parent, I can understand how this piece generates serious concerns. Our investigation into these allegations is still ongoing.

“We are committed to maintaining a safe, non-discriminatory educational environment for all students. Sexual harassment and sexual assault are unacceptable in our schools.”

Asked to comment for this story, Palo Alto school board President Terry Godfrey said in an email the board has asked staff for “more information on the communications with other agencies and the timeline of events to better understand how the process has worked. The investigation is still underway and in my mind the primary concern is understanding if other students have been affected, supporting those students and restoring the environment on campus.”

In October 2015, the first victim, who attends Menlo-Atherton High School, was at a church youth group outing in Palo Alto with the Palo Alto High student when he assaulted her. They were both 15 then.

When the group returned to event facilities after getting pizza, the assailant asked her to go to the bathroom so they could wash their hands, the victim said. She thought he wanted to kiss her, which he had done once before in May.

When the victim turned to leave after washing her hands, the assailant stood between her and the doorway and told her to orally copulate him.

“I kept saying no, not right now, I’m not ready to do this,” she said. But he continued to pressure her, and, surmising that he wouldn’t move, she complied. Less than five seconds into the act, she tried to pull her head away.

“I was pulling away with enough force he could tell I wanted to stop,” the victim said, “but he kept pushing my head down to the point I could not breathe.

“I was choking and consistently tried to pull away but he kept saying, ‘Don’t stop,’ and kept my head there.”

Afterward, he told her not to tell anyone.

Rickard told The Daily News there was consent. “The female never told the male she changed her mind during the act itself,” she said. “How do you know what someone doesn’t tell you?”

The victim said she reported the incident to police about a month later and they worked with her to arrange a phone call in which she asked him why he forced her head down. He apologized and admitted fault during the call, she said.

She said police should have alerted Palo Alto High.

Palo Alto police Capt. Zach Perron declined to say whether the department did so but noted it does not typically notify schools of investigations involving juveniles that occur off campus, partly because there are so many of them. Another reason is because juvenile suspects have a right to privacy, Perron said.

For on-campus crimes, on the other hand, police keep school officials abreast of events, Perron said.

In the second case, police met school officials and the victim’s mother on the Palo Alto High campus in October 2016 to take an incident report. That victim said she shared a class with the assailant, so she didn’t think anything of it when he asked her to meet him at the library bathroom.

Inside the bathroom, “he grabbed me at my waist and he locked the door,” the second victim said. “He started kissing me. I said, ‘I don’t know if I can do this. I can’t do this. No, it hurts. I don’t want to do this.’ ”

The assailant first tried to turn her around, she said. Then he tried to have her straddle him, then demanded oral sex and forced her head down. She said she felt as if she didn’t comply, he would hit her.

“I was scared,” the second victim said. “He’s strong. At that moment I just kinda felt stuck.”

Seven months later, she still feels stuck.

“People tell me that the more I talk about it, the less the incident holds over me,” she said. “I still don’t trust a lot of people, but I started talking about it because I realize I can’t handle this on my own, always feeling like I am going to break down.”

Rickard said she cannot legally comment about this case.

The attack left the second victim feeling increasingly depressed and anxious. Her grades dropped. She said she became the subject of bullying, from rumors to graffiti messages on bathroom walls.

She faults Palo Alto High for not keeping her safe from bullying in retaliation to her complaint.

She obtained a temporary restraining order a month after the assault that requires her assailant to stay at least 100 yards away from her, her home and her school. The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office served the assailant the order during school hours at the campus and also served his parents via the superintendent’s office.

The student, through his attorney, filed an objection to the temporary restraining order.

“I did not threaten Petitioner or touch her without her permission,” he said in a response to the order. “I have changed my class schedule so that I am not in class with Petitioner.”

The victim said knowing that her assailant was on campus — and having to see him and hear his name — was traumatizing and would set off panic attacks.

The victim’s mother eventually decided to do what’s best for her daughter: move the family 100 miles away from Palo Alto.

“The school has a responsibility to keep my daughter safe and they didn’t do everything they can here,” said the second victim’s mother. “They should have warned all students that he’s dangerous and that he’s being investigated for sexual assault. I don’t think he should be on campus if he sexually assaults girls.”

School officials have cited the same federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act to explain why they can’t alert the public. Although colleges and universities are required to report crimes that occur on campus to the school community as part of the federal Clery Act, no such law applies to high schools.

The state Education Code says the superintendent or principal shall suspend and recommend expulsion for any student they believe committed or attempted to commit sexual battery on school grounds or at a school activity.

The cases for the two victims concluded separately in December with Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Margaret Johnson sustaining at least one charge, oral copulation by force, in the first victim’s case. The sentencing was in January.

For forcing the first victim to have oral sex, the assailant was placed on probation, ordered to attend sexual offender counseling, pay restitution of $15,000 and adhere to a restraining order for three years.

The assailant will not have to register as a sex offender, according to court documents.

In a statement read to the court, the first victim asserted that the assailant should be penalized with more than probation for assaulting her.

“In violating my body, you attacked every aspect of my very being,” she said. “The crime scene was not only the bathroom. … The crime scene was my body, my mouth — things I must interact with every day of my life. … For the longest time, I didn’t even feel safe in my own body.”

The felony resulting from the first victim’s case is on a list of juvenile offenses, including forced oral copulation, deemed serious enough that related court documents cannot be sealed. But a majority of juvenile cases are confidential, as was the second victim’s.

The victim in the second case said she will be paid restitution of about $5,000. This detail — and the charges and outcome of the case — cannot be independently verified by this newspaper because court officials say the case is not a public record.

District spokesman Quintana said the school did not learn of the first victim’s case until February this year after it was adjudicated and the court notified the superintendent, as required by state law, and the first victim contacted the school to file a complaint.

The victims met separately with federal Title IX investigators and submitted their paperwork in March and April. Title IX obligates school districts to follow up on bullying and sexual violence allegations. School officials must investigate promptly and thoroughly, independent of a police investigation and regardless of whether a victim makes a request

The Palo Alto school district’s policies on student discipline center on a “progressive discipline” framework in which the least punitive methods are tried first. The goal is to keep students in school, according to the guidelines, so methods such as community service, outreach to parents and a loss of extracurricular privileges are implemented before suspension or expulsion.

The Palo Alto school board approved an agreement resolution in late February with the federal Office for Civil Rights to rectify processes that make it easier for students to report sex-based complaints.

In March, following a yearslong investigation, the federal agency found that the Palo Alto Unified School District failed to promptly and thoroughly investigate reports that its students were sexually harassed by other students or school employees on multiple occasions.

In at least nine instances between 2011 and 2016, the agency found there was no evidence or documentation that the district investigated reports of sexual assault, immediately acted after receiving reports of sexual harassment or initiated a Title IX investigation.

The agency’s recent findings do not include the complaints made by the two victims in this story.

The victims said they hope their coming forward will evoke change in how the Palo Alto school district handles reports of sexual assault and harassment.

“I think people need to know survivors of sexual violence are people not assaulted in dark alleyways by strange men,” the first victim said. “They’re assaulted at church youth groups, in classrooms, in locker rooms. It’s not just at fraternity parties. Putting a face on victims and perpetrators is important in society.”