A now-former cadet at Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville is suing the school in federal court, claiming he was raped and assaulted by other students, and accusing the school of not doing enough to protect him. Now, records from Gainesville Police indicate he wasn't the only student to claim he was assaulted at Riverside.
The former cadet, who turned 18 this year, said in his lawsuit that the abuse started in 2012, when he was 12 years old. The young man said he was sexually assaulted and beaten by other cadets on campus. He accused the school of failing to intervene or tell police about his complaints as the school would have been required to do under Georgia law, and claimed he dropped out of Riverside after one school year, just to make it stop.
11Alive obtained records of all Gainesville Police calls to the campus going back to 2012, and, in fact, the records indicate that no one reported to police the 12-year-old cadet's complaints of abuse, as he alleges in his lawsuit.
Since 2012, police have been called to the academy 21 times to investigate major and minor crimes--most of them relatively minor crimes. More than 500 cadets attend the school, in Grades 7 through 12. Eight of the 21 cases were assaults involving cadets– including two reports of sexual abuse on campus, in 2016 and 2017.
In the 2016 case, police arrested a 17-year-old cadet, accusing him of having “inappropriate sexual contact with another cadet,” according to Sgt. Kevin Holbrook with the Gainesville Police Department.
The 2017 investigation into alleged sexual assault resulted in police closing the case without making any arrests.
"The victim and/or the guardians decided they did not wish to prosecute the case or did not wish to take the case any further," Sgt. Holbrook said.
Other investigations of assaults on campus included a case in 2013 in which officers arrested a cadet and charged him with battery after they say he violently attacked another cadet. According to police reports, the cadet "punched and used his knee to break two teeth on the victim."
Last year, a 17-year-old cadet burst into the commandant's office, and violently attacked the commandant and threatened to kill him. Police said the cadet was angry that his phone had been confiscated. According to the police reports, the commandant decided not to press charges against the cadet.
Riverside Military Academy declined Tuesday to comment on the cases of on-campus assaults that police have investigated, and declined again to comment on the federal lawsuit brought by the former cadet. School attorneys have not yet filed, in federal court, their formal response disputing the former cadet’s claims of sexual abuse on campus.