Bipartisan effort seeks stricter measures to protect sexual assault
victims in schools
[March 28, 2025]
By Athan Yanos and Medill Illinois News Bureau
SPRINGFIELD — Even after the family of a victim of sexual assault from
Taylorville obtained an emergency order of protection, the school still
allowed the young girl’s assailant to attend the same school and merely
moved him to a different school bus with younger students.
It was only after three weeks of filing multiple orders of protection in
court and advocating on their daughter’s behalf that the girl’s parents
were able to get the assailant removed from their daughter’s school.
In response to this mishandled incident, state Sen. Steven McClure,
R-Springfield, introduced a bill in January to help combat sexual
violence and protect victims in Illinois schools.
That bill, Senate Bill 98, was not assigned to a committee before the
Senate committee deadline on March 21 — a necessary step in becoming a
law. But McClure said he has not given up hope for the bill and has
filed a letter requesting an extension on the bill past the deadline
this session.
“It’s still very much in play,” McClure said Wednesday about the bill,
which has gained bipartisan support.
SB 98 would amend the Illinois School Code to implement a mandatory
one-year expulsion for any public school student who is determined by
that district’s school board to have committed sexual assault, sexual
harassment or engaged in a sexual activity without the consent of the
other person. The bill specifies that it will include instances of
sexual assault that occur in school or during any activities or events
that “bear a reasonable relationship to the school.”
Approximately 82% of women in the United States have experienced sexual
assault or sexual harassment, and 56% of women have experienced sexual
assault before they turned 18, according to a 2024 study by Stop the
Hate, a nonprofit organization dedicated to documenting and ending
gender-based street harassment worldwide.
McClure said he filed the bill after a 10-year-old girl at Taylorville
Junior High School in his district was sexually assaulted multiple times
on her school bus by a 14-year-old boy and then later sexually assaulted
again by that same boy at their school bus stop after the school did not
take measures to separate the two students.
“I filed the bill to stick up for these kids. It’s not fair for somebody
who gets raped to have to go to school the next day on the school bus
with the same person who did that,” McClure said.
The mother of the young Taylorville girl who was assaulted has advocated
for the bill.
“We have laws where a student gets expelled for bringing a weapon on
school grounds. For my daughter, this young man’s body was his weapon,
and he continually brought his weapon to school, on the bus and to the
bus stop,” she said at a Capitol news conference earlier this year.
“This is not acceptable.”
Officials at Taylorville Junior High School declined to comment on SB 98
and their handling of the girl’s case.
Sen. Terri Bryant, R-Murphysboro, who signed on as a co-sponsor to the
bill, said that she supports the mandatory one-year expulsion but wishes
it was more severe because of the high risk that many young girls face
of being sexually assaulted.
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State Sen. Steven McClure, R-Springfield, right, introduced a bill
to help combat sexual violence and protect victims in Illinois
schools. (Jerry Nowicki for Capitol News Illinois)
“They shouldn’t be allowed to go back to a public school because
students should be safe when they are at a public school,” Bryant said.
“I have two sisters, and all three of us were sexually abused, so 100%
of the girls in my immediate family were sexually assaulted.”
Sen. Jil Tracy, R-Quincy, a chief co-sponsor, said her decision to
support the bill was largely influenced by a similar incident that
happened in her school district, where a young girl was sexually
assaulted by an older student on a school bus. The boy who allegedly
assaulted the girl was still allowed to ride the bus with her, she said.
“The school officials didn’t like it, but they didn’t really have tools
to deal with it,” Tracy said. She later explained that the girl was
given a scholarship to attend a different school but still had to
provide her own transportation to that school.
Carrie Ward, who is the CEO of the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual
Assault and has publicly backed SB 98, said her group is “routinely”
contacted by students who have been sexually assaulted in a school or in
a school-related setting.
Although Ward explained that she does not know whether the bill will
help prevent further instances of sexual assault, she believes it will
elevate the importance of addressing sexual assault in school and
acknowledging its prevalence.
Senate Majority Leader Kimberly Lightford, D-Mayfield, one of the chief
co-sponsors of the bill and the Chair of Assignments, said in a
statement to Capitol News Illinois that while she fully supports the
bill, she is “continuing to review legislation filed.”
McClure said he has worked with the Illinois Education Association — the
powerful teachers union that is backing the bill — and several other
educational organizations to craft amendments to the bill, which he
plans to file as soon as the bill is assigned to a committee.
McClure said the amendments would give a school’s superintendent and
members of the school board authority to make changes in an expulsion on
a “case-by-case basis,” which McClure said was necessary to prevent
court challenges to the legislation. Also, he said, the amendments would
more clearly define sexual assault to account for the fact that in most
schools, students are at an age where they cannot give consent.
Sen. Julie Morrison, D-Lake Forest, said she believes the bill addresses
a bipartisan issue in an important way.
“If there’s one thing we can agree on, it’s that students should feel
safe at school,” said Morrison, who also is a chief co-sponsor.
Athan Yanos is a graduate student in journalism with
Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media,
Integrated Marketing Communications, and fellows in its Medill
Illinois News Bureau working in partnership with Capitol News
Illinois.
Capitol News Illinois is
a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state
government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is
funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R.
McCormick Foundation. |
