Ashley Rolen; Fighting To Have Her Abusers Removed From Oklahoma Public Schools

Ashley Rolen submitted statements to the Little Axe school district in 2002, describing the sexual abuse that had been perpetrated on her by several coaches employed by the district.

Nothing was done either done to help Ashley, or remove the coaches. Ashley moved on with her life.

But as Ashley tells us in the full podcast (YouTube Rumble), the day she heard about Olympic physician, Larry Nassar, and the stories of the brave gymnasts who told of their sexual abuse while under his care, she knew she had to make it right – for herself and for the other girls to whom this had happened and ones to whom it might be happening now.

As an adult, Ashley filed a complaint with the Oklahoma State Department of Education under Joy Hoffmeister. She was told that they had no investigators for her case and that she’d have to do her own investigation – which she did – and returned it to the OSDE under Ryan Walters.

Still – a full year later – and nothing has been done about the coaches who abused her, nearly all of whom are still employed by the State of Oklahoma in a public school.

In the video below, Ashley talks about what needs to happen for these reports to be taken seriously by school administration and the OSDE – which she doesn’t believe is really happening now.

In the video below, V1SUT Vantage blogger, Mary, Ashley, Michael Grande and I discuss how schools are getting around mandatory sex abuse reporting laws, allowing public school employees who have abused students to just disappear from the school and wind up at another without ever being made to pay for their crimes. The level of protectionism among school staff makes it nearly impossible for reporting to occur outside the school and even then, if a school resource officer shows up to talk to the complaining parties (the student and his/her parents or guardians) with school administration, it appears that school administration feels as though that kind of scenario IS the reporting.

If Ashley’s story teaches us anything, it’s that if we’re to save Oklahoma children from sexual predators operating inside Oklahoma public schools, we have to force schools to properly INVESTIGATE and REPORT and for the OSDE to put actually put parents and students first, by having any claims investigated by the OSDE promptly and teaching certificates removed so that the perpetrators can no longer harm CHILDREN.