[dr2005]

I hope the school board themselves have a good legal team on standby, because they could end up with the mother and father of all damages claims landing on their heads if it turns out they indeed failed to act on a rape complaint and allowed a second rape to occur as a result. That has "negligence" written all over it frankly.

On the credible witness point which has been raised, disability alone is not sufficient to render a witness testimony unreliable - applying such a blanket principle is deeply flawed, to say nothing of contrary to the principles governing admissibility of evidence. The reliability of a witness can only be realistically judged on a case-by-case basis. In any event, in an instance such as this she would most likely be deemed incapable of giving informed consent and so the boy in question would likely be charged with statutory rape or a lesser sexual assault, unless it could be demonstrated that she was in fact capable of giving informed consent. As such, in light of the physical evidence it is actually down to the defendant to prove that valid consent existed or he had reasonable grounds for believing it existed. Most statutes concerning rape and sexual offences are quite clear on that point.