Parents want answers after alleged rape of 15-year-old

ATHENS, Ga. — Athens-Clarke County school officials faced some angry parents Wednesday night. They are upset after two rape suspects were allowed to stay in school three weeks after an alleged sexual assault.

That alleged rape happened at Cedar Shoals High School on Jan. 7. Three teens are accused of raping a 15-year old girl.

But parents didn't find out about it for an entire month.

Parents met with school officials Wednesday night to try to find out why.

"When you allow rapists to stay in school for three weeks that does endanger students," one mother told school officials.

The entire incident was caught on video surveillance. But two of the suspects were allowed to remain in school for three weeks before their arrest.

"Why did it take 12 days after you saw the surveillance video to get these kids out of school, and why aren't we getting answers right now?" another parent asked.

School officials did their best to field questions, but angered some parents when they said they couldn't answer some of them because of privacy laws.
 
Superintendent Philip Lanoue admitted the district made mistakes and offered a plan to fix them.
          
"No. 1, to make sure the safety of our students and make sure we communicate transparently with our parents, which is something we've done really well, but didn't do so well in this incident," Lanoue told Channel 2's Richard Elliot.
 
Tracy Anderson has a ninth-grade daughter at Cedar Shoals. She's thinks school officials offered up more excuses than concrete plans to fix the problems.
 
"Somewhat satisfied but not completely because it's like there are more excuses about what happened than it is about trying to fix the problem," Anderson told Elliot.
 
Lanoue replaced the principal at Cedar Shoals.
 
He also plans to meet with all the district's principals to make sure they're all on the same page when it comes to security.

WSBTV