Parent sues the Marlboro County School District following a 2023 assault at BPS

BENNETTSVILLE—The Marlboro County School District and a former district employee have been named in a lawsuit filed by the father of two former Bennettsville Primary School students. The incident happened in February, 2023 at the school, according to the lawsuit.

Attorney Roy T. Willey IV, who is representing the family, said at a press conference Tuesday, “The incident report and investigation into this matter shows that one of the children called the teacher’s aide Tall Boy and because of that, allegedly, the teacher’s aide decided to grab the child by his chest, threw him against the cafeteria table. And when his brother attempted to intervene, he ended up throwing them through the air and taking both boys into the bathroom where the assault continued. Other teachers were present and witnessed this assault, but did not intervene. In fact, this assault was never reported to the principal until the next day when Alphonso Kirven reported it to her.”

Kirven is the father of the two former students. Willey said after the principal received Kirven’s call, an investigation began and the school reviewed the video and called the police. “This is becoming an all too common occurrence in schools across our state,” Willey said. “In the place where they should feel the most safe, they are becoming the victims of violence at the hands of teachers and others they should trust. This is because we aren’t doing in this state adequate background checks, we aren’t providing adequate resources to the schools to hire the people that we should have in places of trust with our children.”

The former teacher’s aide is named in the lawsuit as Patrick Williams. Willey said Williams no longer works for the district, but he also revealed that when he sent the district a FOIA request for information about Williams’s employment and asked for his application and qualifications to work at the school, that information was not shared. But what was shared, according to Willey was “six pages back, all of which were created after his employment. We didn’t get a background check. We didn’t get an application. A résumé. Any reference check. All we got were progress reports through the years. And what did those progress reports, show about Mr. Williams? They show that he had been previously written up, for an incident involving other staff members, he had been written up and threatened with termination because he got aggressive on school grounds over a code violation. But, no additional action was taken. Other than a letter that was putting his file. What we did not get was any investigation into this matter or any investigation into his background prior to his hiring and that’s unacceptable.”

The lawsuit alleges that the district and Williams were grossly negligent and the plaintiffs are seeking “damages, punitive and actual, for the cost and disbursements of this action, post judgment interest, and for such other and further relief, in law or in equity, as this court may deem just and proper.”