SCOTTS VALLEY >> A group of Scotts Valley High school girls and their parents are reeling after a 15-year-old boy handed one of the girls a graphic letter that described him stabbing to death two students and raping several girls and a teacher at knife point.

A lawyer for one of the families also expressed concern that school administrators did not follow Scotts Valley Unified School District’s policy on sexual harassment and didn’t protect the girls from the boy at school.

The Sentinel is not naming the students because they are minors.

The boy handed the handwritten, eight-page letter to a 15-year-old girl in his class on June 2. The letter, provided to the Sentinel, described a detailed rape and murder fantasy at the school in which the boy wrote he would throw a knife in a girl’s eye. He wrote he would stab a third student in the throat.

“Take your clothes off, or that will happen to you,” the boy wrote. “We can do it the easy way where both of you do it willingly or the hard way where I tye (sic) you up and rape you,” according to the story, which also details lewd acts with a teacher.

The letter goes on to describe in lurid, graphic detail some rough sex acts with several other female students as he roams the school. Some of the girls are duct taped so they won’t escape.

“I told them, ‘You can struggle all you want, that just makes me want to (expletive) you more,’” the boy wrote.

Disgusted, the girl tore up the pages in front of him and threw them in a waste bin. He smiled and said he kept a copy on his phone, according to the girl. The girl knew the boy but they weren’t close friends.

Later, she fished the pages out of the trash and pieced them back together. When she told school Principal Valerie Bariteau about the letter, the family’s lawyer said the school’s response was not what the girl or her family expected. The matter wasn’t handled as outlined in the school’s sexual harassment policy, according to the girl’s family attorney in the matter, Jim Sibley. Sibley, who took on the case pro bono on behalf of Tollner Law Offices of San Jose, is a former Santa Cruz and Santa Clara county prosecutor who has handled juvenile cases.

Sibley said the parents of the girl and other parents “want for the girls to return to the school and feel safe.”

Because of the letter, school administrators isolated the boy in a school office room to take his final exams. However, the room had a glass wall, and the girl had to walk past it at least three times that day where the boy could see her. She said she was unnerved because the boy could still see her and was unsupervised. The boy was not suspended from school, which ended June 8.

The girls, “felt that the school gave no consideration to the impact this had on them,” Sibley said. “No offer was made to counsel them or take their finals in a room where they felt they would be secure. (They asked) ‘What do I do the following year, where I have to deal with this kid and look him in the eye when he’s told me he wants to rape me?’”

When questioned by the Sentinel, Bariteau said she was limited in what she could say about the case because student disciplinary matters generally are confidential.

The Sentinel’s attempts to reach the boy and his parents this week were unsuccessful.

When the girl brought her complaint to Bariteau the morning after she received the letter, Bariteau said she took the case to a Scotts Valley police school resource officer assigned to the school. She said the boy’s narrative was a “story” rather than a letter.

The girl wasn’t satisfied with Bariteau’s response.

“He was still allowed to come to school to take his finals, which I understand, but it could have been dealt with differently,” the girl said in a statement provided by Sibley. “All of us (named in the letter) felt extremely uncomfortable that he was given no true consequence. Along with that, the school didn’t even follow policy. The school was not interested in our well-being but more in his, and in this they believed that pushing this under the rug will make us forget everything. We were asked not to tell anyone, including the people on the lists (named in the letter) who have a right to know.”

At least two parts of the school district’s sexual harassment policy were not followed, Sibley said.

HARASSMENT POLICY

School leaders are supposed to provide the person who was harassed with “options to avoid contact with the alleged harasser and allow the complainant to change academic and extracurricular arrangements as appropriate,” according to the school district’s policy on sexual harassment. Neither the girl who complained nor the others named in the letter were given those options, according to the girls and Sibley.

Second, “the school should also ensure that the complainant is aware of the resources and assistance, such as counseling, that are available to him/her.” That didn’t happen immediately, according to the girl and Sibley.

School officials declined to answer whether they followed specific steps in the school district’s sexual harassment policy, whether the student was disciplined and whether the girls’ safety concerns would be addressed in the new school year.

“There’s really not a lot I can tell you right now,” said principal Bariteau. “It has been addressed, there has been an investigation with the police and it was determined that it (the outcome) was OK.”

When asked to respond to allegations that the school district’s sexual harassment policy was not followed, Bariteau referred the Sentinel to Sharlene Ransom, the Scotts Valley School District’s director of student services.

Ransom said she could not discuss the case because of rules in the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. However, Ransom said, “Any such allegation would be taken seriously and all protocols will be followed in accordance with all district regulations or laws. Any complaints or allegations wouldn’t be dismissed. They would be properly investigated and assessed.”

Ransom declined to answer whether the boy would be suspended or if a hearing will take place to consider expulsion.

Since the Sentinel began asking school leaders about the case this week, the district has contacted people named in the letter in what appears to be a further investigation of the case, Sibley said. A school district representative also called the girls’ parents and asked the students and families to meet to discuss the case and their safety.

A representative from the Santa Cruz County District Attorney’s Office also contacted Sibley.

Sibley’s point is that if the boy had spoken the threats that were in the letter to the girl, it would constitute a threat of violence and a crime.

“To me, writing it down makes it worse,” Sibley said. “It’s exposing a minor to pornographic material.”

As a former prosecutor, Sibley said that would be one of the charges he would consider filing against the boy.

THREAT GAUGE

Tony Hoffman is a child development lecturer at UC Santa Cruz and was a child and family therapist in Santa Cruz for 17 years. He reviewed a transcript of the boy’s story at the Sentinel’s request this week. Hoffman said the boy clearly had access to pornography.

“The narratives are readily accessible to 15-year-old boys, whether it’s video or printed,” Hoffman said. “The issue is, did he understand what he was doing? It might depend on how he intended this and how well he understood he what he was doing. It doesn’t excuse him, but it could be hard to have him truly understand the gravity of his actions.”

Hoffman mentioned that a threat assessment developed by the FBI in the wake of recent school shootings recommends considering previous acts, whether their are weapons and other factors. Because Hoffman did not have access to the boy’s history, sexual past and other behaviors, he said it was difficult to gauge whether the boy would act on anything he wrote.

“I feel sorry for both of them,” said Hoffman. “The fact that the girl got angry about it might show an act of resilience.”

Scotts Valley Police Chief John Weiss said the school resource officer, who is a city police officer, talked to the boy and talked to his father about the letter. The boy’s father was “cooperative,” Weiss said. The boy’s home was not searched, according to Sibley.

Weiss said the letter was “very unsettling” and “inappropriate,” but, “it doesn’t appear that there was a crime.” Weiss said police took into account whether the boy had shown other dangerous behavior at the school and if there were other letters.

Weiss declined to comment on the boy’s history.

“The school’s following up on it,” Weiss said. “We take every incident seriously. You can’t take any risks. We always want to make sure our students are safe. We want to make sure that there’s no intent to harm anyone.”

It’s unclear if a report was generated or forwarded to the DA’s Office. If criminal action was taken against the boy, it wouldn’t be public record because he is a minor.

Weiss said he though the letter appeared to be inspired by the 2013 movie “The Purge,” in which authorities allow a 12-hour period in which all crimes, including murder, are legalized.

The girl’s parents plan to pursue a restraining order against the boy, Sibley said. They are still considering whether to go to the Scotts Valley Unified School Board with a complaint.

“The principal and school staff didn’t do a thorough investigation and were negligent in ensuring protection of students, and school staff against a potentially violent person,” said a parent of one of the girls. The Sentinel is not naming the parent because it would identify the minor girl.

Another parent of one of the girls said, “I am in complete shock and disbelief at the principal’s response to this dangerous situation. I felt like the school was protecting the perpetrator and ignoring the possible threat to the victims. I am at a loss of words that a person who would write such a descriptive rape and kill list would be allowed to stay on campus at all.”