Chicago police detectives have closed their investigation of an alleged sexual assault at Lincoln Park High School without making an arrest.
The case has been one of the incidents at the center of the chaos at the North Side school and is the subject of a pending lawsuit against Chicago Public Schools.
The negligence lawsuit, filed earlier this month by an anonymous father in Cook County Circuit Court on behalf of his underage daughter, alleged the school district failed to protect a teenage girl from a mid-January sexual assault inside a classroom at Lincoln Park.
CPS “failed to provide adequate security on the premises to protect ... against sexual assault” and “failed to implement policies to prevent the sexual abuse of minors on school property,” the suit said.
The alleged assault happened after school Jan. 13 when a male student, who is an athlete, met the girl in an unlocked classroom where she was studying, according to the lawsuit.
While CPS’ Office of Student Protections and Title IX continues to investigate, Chicago police confirmed this week that their criminal investigation was closed and cleared without charges, but gave no further explanation.
Patrick Condron, the attorney representing the girl and her father in the lawsuit, declined to comment Thursday.
Condron previously told the Sun-Times that “the young lady is not doing well at all, it’s really a bad situation. They’ve got to step up and protect these kids, and it’s not happening.”
The handling of the incident has been one of the issues under the microscope at Lincoln Park after CPS officials at the start of the month fired the school’s principal and assistant principal, removed four basketball coaches and suspended the boys’ basketball season.
The shakeup has rocked the school community, which has fiercely protested what they’ve called a lack of communication from CPS officials about the allegations that led to the drastic changes.
As recently as Wednesday, two dozen Lincoln Park parents pushed back on the district’s decisions, urging the Board of Education at its monthly meeting to reverse course.
CPS CEO Janice Jackson, making her first public comments on the issue at the meeting, said those parents were wrong to paint the fired administrators as victims.