Two teenage students at the Atlanta Area School for the Deaf are charged with molesting a 10-year-old Roswell boy on their school bus for much of this school year.
The two accused, one 16 and one 14, are being charged as adults and are to appear in Fulton County Superior Court today on charges of aggravated child molestation and aggravated sodomy, according to the court .
Tommy Lee Maddox, a lawyer for the 10-year-old, said both boys sodomized his client from September until early 2012. The 10-year-old was too frightened to report to his parents or school authorities the assaults that occurred on school bus trips between his home and the Clarkston school, the lawyer said.
“He was just violated in every way you can imagine," Maddox said. “Back in January the 14-year-old was on top of him and he screamed and that’s when it stopped. He didn’t know he could scream.“
But the abuse came to light in March after the 14-year-old told his mother that the 16-year-old had sodomized him in February and he was afraid of the boy because of continuous sexual assaults. Forensic tests at Children's at Scottish Rite hospital in Sandy Springs confirmed what the boy described as a rape. The boy then told investigators that the 16-year-old also had assaulted an even younger boy, according to a investigative report by Fulton County schools police.
Maddox said the younger boy was his 10-year-old client, who told investigators that both the 14-year-old and the 16-year-old had repeatedly assaulted him. (The police report referred to the boys as Juvenile A, B and C and Maddox supplied the boys' ages to The Atlanta Journal Constitution and Channel 2 Action News.)
In a report dated April 18, Fulton County schools Officer Nicole Wright said the School for the Deaf had reported the abuse to Clarkston police Detective Sean Harris, who handed the case to Fulton County schools police because the crimes are alleged to have happened while the Fulton County school bus transported the students.
The Atlanta Area School for the Deaf declined to comment on the case. The Fulton County Board of Education also declined to comment except to say the bus driver is no longer employed by the district.
Maddox questioned whether that driver did enough to protect her client.
"If this went on day after day and she is just in Lah Lah Land, that is really bad,’’ said Maddox.
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