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PARK CITY — The Park City School District agreed to give additional child abuse, neglect and reporting training to its employees in a plea deal addressing three class B misdemeanor charges claiming the district failed to report child abuse.
"The district remains deeply committed to the safety and well being of all students and values our partnership with Summit County in this endeavor," a statement from the school district said.
In March 2022, prosecutors filed three counts of failing to report child abuse against the school district in 3rd District Court. The charges were resolved with a diversion agreement filed on July 26, 2022.
Now the district is halfway through a two-year agreement, which is a type of plea, to provide additional training. As long as the district follows the conditions in the document for the next year, the charges will be dismissed without any sentencing or further requirements.
The conditions include supplementing annual training for child abuse and neglect with training approved or provided by the Summit County Attorney's Office, reporting child abuse as required by Utah's laws, and cooperating with the county attorney's office with reporting and investigating suspected child abuse.
The diversion agreement signed by the district's lawyers is clear that the school district has not admitted any guilt for the charges and does not agree the investigations are accurate.
In the diversion agreement, Park City School District's attorney Mark Moffat said it was entered "in an effort to resolve this matter in a manner that serves the interests of justice."
Charging documents state the abuse that was not reported occurred over the last 2½ years and the case focuses only on whether allegations were reported, and does not address any of the abuse allegations, themselves.
In the first instance, a parent told two employees of the school district in 2019 that their child claimed an employee inappropriately touched them. The two employees passed the report to a third employee, but the report was never given to law enforcement or Child Protective Services.
Police learned after the parent sought medical help in November 2021 and the medical professional contacted police. Officers and Division of Child and Family Services workers contacted the superintendent and were told the case was resolved in 2019.
When they asked who was supposed to report the allegation to police, Superintendent Jill Gildea said it would be the parents. She reported she did not know if the incident was reported because she "wasn't working for the district in 2019," though, she was appointed as superintendent in 2018.
The county attorney's office issued a subpoena. While going through the more than 600 documents it received, prosecutors found two more incidents of the school district failing to report alleged abuse, according to charging documents.
In one instance, a student allegedly raped another student and a school district employee contacted the victim's parents but not the police, charging documents say. In the other, a girl was allegedly raped and a district employee held mediation between the parents of both students, but again did not contact police, the charges claim.
"It is the legal duty of any individual who has reason to believe that a child is, or has been, the subject of abuse or neglect (or observes a child being subjected to conditions or circumstances that would reasonably result in abuse or neglect) to immediately report to the Utah Division of Child and Family Services or local law enforcement," the Summit County Attorney's Office said in a statement about the charges.
Correction: This article stated the agreement was reached in July this year, but it was reached in 2022.
