National establishment media coverage of the alleged Montgomery County, Maryland rape of a 14 year-old freshman at Rockville High School at the hands of two late-teen classmates in the U.S. illegally — a story which first drew national attention only because it became a White House press briefing topic — has been grudging from the start.
Now it has virtually ceased, even though the incident is at least the second recent violent one at the school, even though the father of one of the two teens is also an illegal immigrant who is now under arrest, and even though school system spending on English for Speakers of Other Languages largely resulting from the County's "sanctuary" status is spiraling out of control. Despite all of this, virtually no one in the press cares.
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The Associated Press has maintained only enough interest in the case to make sure its audience knows that the accused rapists are claiming that the sex was consensual. The girl's reported behavior during the incident as documented in the police report doesn't support that notion, so it doesn't matter what she allegedly texted these now-desperate, depraved defendants before the rape occurred. (Also, the complete absence of feminist outrage at this legal tactic is duly noted.)
At Fox News this past weekend, Judge Jeanine Pirro opened her first of two segments on the effect of illegal immigration on the nation's schools with the following statement:
Do you know who's in school with your children? If you think your school administrator or principal has your back, think again.
The student who was raped is not the only child betrayed by Rockville High's administration.
It turns out that another female student was assaulted about two weeks earlier. Though there's no indication that immigration status or sexual assault were elements in this incident, frightening violence certainly was, as reported by DC radio station WTOP (bolds are mine throughout this post):
Lawyer: Girl, 17, beaten at Rockville High; community wasn’t notified
A local attorney says school officials failed to inform Rockville High’s parent community of violent incidents weeks before an alleged brutal rape occurred at the school.
Rene Sandler, the lawyer for the family of a Rockville High student, said her client, a 17-year-old girl, was “jumped” and beaten in the main lobby of the high school the morning of March 7, and that parents, other than the parents of the victim, were not informed.
Sandler showed WTOP’s Kate Ryan a video of the incident, which Sandler said left her client with severe head injuries.
“She’s grabbed by her hair; she’s pulled to the ground; she’s being beaten to her head with fists, and then the final sort of coup de grace is three kicks directly to her head — and then she’s left on the ground,” said Sandler, describing the attack.
She said the attack, which lasted roughly 30 seconds, was finally broken up by a staff member who raced down a hallway, past students who gathered to watch — and to record the incident on their cellphones. “There are no security officers around,” Sandler said.
At a PTSA meeting in the wake of the reported rape of a student at Rockville High, Principal Billie Jean Bensen told parents the school has five security staff members and the Montgomery County Police Department’s student resource officer, along with 105 cameras in the school.
... Sandler said her client, a senior, was directed to fill out an account of the incident while she was at the nurse’s office. Sandler said police were not called at the time of the attack.
Montgomery County schools have a memorandum of understanding with the Montgomery County police under which the schools are directed to call police when a crime is committed. Sandler said that’s not optional; it’s mandated.
The incident, and especially its handling, renders utterly hollow Montgomery County Schools Superintendent Jack Smith's reassurances after the violent illegal-immigrant rape about school safety ("expressing horror at the second crime and repeatedly assuring parents that their children are safe at school," according to the Associated Press). In the first incident, his own administrators failed to contact law enforcement when required, and failed to keep the community informed.
Though their performance, as seen above, has been scandalously unimpressive, a more fundamental question is why a high school with 1,220 students needs five security staff members, a student resource officer, and 105 cameras, when there's all this research out there which insists that the crime rate for immigrants, including illegals, is supposedly lower than that of native-born citizens. (The answer is that the research is bogus.)
Press coverage of the earlier violent incident has been limited to local news outlets.
Now, in a complete non-surprise, it turns out that the father of the older of the two illegal-immigrant defendants in the rape case is also in this country illegally. In what would have been a surprise three months ago, but is not so much now, he has been arrested:
Father of Maryland high school rape suspect arrested by ICE
The father of an 18-year-old Rockville High School student charged with the rape of a fellow classmate has been arrested for being in the country illegally, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
ICE spokesperson Sarah Rodriguez said 43-year-old Adolfo Sanchez-Reyes was arrested last Friday “after a review of his immigration history revealed he was unlawfully present in the United States” from Guatemala.
Sanchez-Reyes has been issued a notice to appear in immigration court and is currently being detained at the Howard County Detention Center in Jessup.
"Howard County"?
Does Sanchez-Reyes really not live in the high school's geographic district? If not, should 18-year-old Henry Sanchez-Milian have been permitted to enroll at Rockville High in Montgomery County? Were he and Sanchez-Reyes using another person's address with their permission to pass a presumed requirement to live in the district and then use the county's "sanctuary" status as a protective cover?
The answers to these questions may not be known, but this much should be clear: 18-year-old Henry Sanchez-Milian entered the U.S. illegally to be with his 43 year-old father, who is also here illegally. He was permitted to do so by ICE, which "eventually released (him) to live with his father," apparently late last summer. If this country had anything resembling control over its borders and its handling of those found here illegally, neither of them should have gotten to Maryland in the first place.
Despite the brief but real national visibility of the underlying high school rape case, including its own previous reporting, the Associated Press has treated the arrest of Sanchez-Reyes as a local story; it was not found in multiple searches Thursday evening at the AP's main national or "Big Story" sites.
Now we'll look at how Montgomery County school students and taxpayers are being hurt in this excerpt from a June 2016 article at ImmigrationReform.com:
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MARYLAND, PROUD SANCTUARY JURISDICTION, GETS WHAT IT DESERVES: THE BIGGEST TAX HIKE IN SEVEN YEARS (8.7 percent — Ed.) AS STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT WANES
... Montgomery County schools are dealing with the same issues as other magnets for illegal immigration: costs are rising but performance by students in the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program is poor.
... The growth of ESOL programs around the country is stark and estimates vary on what percentage of these students are illegal immigrants or the offspring of illegal immigrants. Many states face challenges recruiting teachers and by 2018, Maryland is projected to require an additional 492 certified ESOL instructors at a cost of $31.2 million.
In Montgomery County, the ESOL program grew from 15,931 students in 2009-2010 to 22,600 in 2016-2017, an increase of 42 percent. (Total school system enrollment grew by about 14 percent during that period. — Ed.) Around 15 percent of all students are in the ESOL program and the county will spend $412 million educating them in 2016-2017, about $142 million and 53 percent more than in 2010. Overall, the school budget rose from $2 billion in 2010 to $2.5 billion in 2016-2017.
Even with all this money, there is little to show for it because like their counterparts across the country, progress is slow for ESOL students in Montgomery County.
... When the federal government allows people to walk across the border, then pushes them into schools ill-equipped to handle the influx, it amounts to arguably the biggest unfunded mandate that the federal government has ever dumped onto the states.
But Maryland and Montgomery County have partially brought this on themselves, since the state issues driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants and Montgomery County proudly touts its illegal alien sanctuary policy ...
We can be quite confident that the County didn't sell its 8.7 percent tax increase as necessary to serve its burgeoning ESOL population, and that the local press, which almost always gives public schools far too much presumptive respect and trust, didn't question the need.
Surely these extra ESOL costs, and other costs associated with the influx of illegal-immigrant children whom the Supreme Court dictated in 1982 are entitled to K-12 public education, are hurting this sanctuary county's schools in other areas, despite the meteoric tax increase just cited.
As I noted in a Wednesday NewsBusters post, the Court claimed in its Plyler vs. Doe ruling that "The record does not show that exclusion of undocumented children is likely to improve the overall quality of education in the State." That has now been proven obviously wrong in Montgomery County. The experience of the past 35 years there, and in so many other areas in the U.S., shows that the inclusion of these children has harmed educational quality, jeopardized children's safety, and bred a dangerous indifference to the law among students, school administrators, and local governments.
The Rockville High rape story threatened to widely expose these serious problems. This in turn explains why the establishment press is so angry that it got visibility in the first place, and so determined to ignore its aftermath.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
