Inside Tate Assault: How not to investigate

This is the Part Two of my interview with the mother who reported the sexual assault at Tate High School. The mother agreed to the interview with the understanding that I would protect her and her son’s identities. (Part 1)

When she got off the phone from her son, the mother said that the hair stood up on the back of her neck. The boy was calling from the school bathroom and had only given his mother the barest details of the sexual assault that he had witnessed. He was scared that someone might hear him so he hung up.

“I immediately called the school guidance officer and told them that I needed them to get my son out of class and to call home immediately,” she told me. The boy told her that he hung up because was scared of Raymond Teamer, who has since been arrested, and his friends. “You don’t understand, mom. These guys are scary.” The boy gives more details of the assault but then hangs up again, afraid someone will overhear him.

There was thirty minutes left in school. The mother calls back and talks to the guidance counselor. “Something happened in my son’s fourth period class. I need to talk with the teacher…it was a sexual assault,” the mother told the counselor. She tells her that she wants to stay anonymous because she was “freaking out.”

Counselor tells her it’s hard to stay anonymous if she gets the teacher out of class. The mother gives her name and talks to the teacher about 20 minutes before the close of school. The teacher tells that she has to inform Ms. Terry Colburn, the assistant principal. Colburn then calls the mother.

“I spill my guts to Ms. Colburn,” she told me. The mother gives Colburn the names of victim and the suspect, Teamer. She agrees to call the assistant principal back after she learns more from her son when he gets on the bus.

The son calls from the bus and gives more details. “Momma, if you tell, I’m going to get beaten up,” the boy told his mother. “Who will believe me? It’s that boy and his two friends. They were laughing while he was doing it.”

She gets all the names and calls Ms. Colburn back around 3:15 p.m. and gives her all the names and details.

That night she sat down with her son and made tell and retell what happened. “I drilled him like an interrogator would,” she told me. “I didn’t want to know anything but the truth.”

The next morning, Wednesday, March 2, she called Ms. Colburn, “These are the details completely and totally. I want to be straight up with you. My son is scared to death. I need you to guarantee me that you’re going to protect my son.” The mother says that Colburn agreed to do so.

Then Dean David Venittozi called her. He said that he had talked to the kids and the no one, including her son, admitted to anything happening in the classroom. She told the dean, “Dean Venitozzi, my son is lying to you. He’s scared to death. You need to go and question every one of them. This is what happened…” The mother proceeded to tell the dean what happened. “I realized that this was the first time that he had actually heard what had gone on.”

The mother was stunned the assistant principal would send the dean to investigate an incident without telling what he was investigating. She asked the dean to let her listen in via a conference call on his next interview with her son so that she could reassure him to tell the truth. “He never called me so I assumed everything was okay.”

She confronted her son when he came home. He admitted to lying the first time and said that he told most of he saw the second time he was interviewed. The boy broke down. “You don’t understand. I got called up in third period and Raymond was right there telling me to keep my mouth shut. Yes, ma’am, I lied.”

Before his second interview, the son tells her that Raymond was in the back of the classroom telling them all what to say. The boy gets called in for a second interview by Venitozzi and Principal Rick Shackle. The boy is scared because he had just been threatened. Bravely, the boy tells both the dean and principal what Raymond Teamer is telling the class what to say.

The dean and principal are mad with the boy for lying in the first interview. “He tells them more of the truth but he is really, really scared,” said the mother.

The boy is called in yet a third time to give a written statement. Raymond Teamer is sitting outside the dean’s office when he walks up. The boy told his mother that he felt sick. ” I felt like I was going to throw up.” Teamer went into on Dean Venitozzi’s office, the witness into Dean Blackmon’s office.

“How can they expect to get good witness statements when they are handling it so miserably, terribly?” asked the mother.

The witness wrote about a seven-line statement about the sexual assault, according to the mother. “That’s about as pitiful as can be, but nobody let me read it. Nobody let me give a statement as to what my son told me.” She is upset that her son didn’t write all the details and that she wasn’t allowed to do so either.

The mother called Principal Shackle to find out what was going on. She says that Shackle was vague and defensive. She asked if the victim had been suspended. The mother admits she got more frustrated as the conversation went on. Frustrated over her son’s safety, treatment of the victim and what she perceived as lack of concern by the principal.

She hung up and the next day notified the Escambia County Sheriff’s Office. She also sent an email to Superintendent Malcolm Thomas.

Meanwhile, the mother says that her son is dealing with guilt of not speaking out. “I was frozen,” the boy tells his mother. “I should have screamed but nothing came out.”

The mother wants justice. “I want the truth to come out.”