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Proposed Illinois legislation would expel students who commit sexual assaults in schools

New Illinois bill aims to protect students from sexual assault
New Illinois bill aims to protect students from sexual assault 00:48

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (CBS) -- A new bill in the Illinois General Assembly aims to protect students from sexual assault.

Illinois Senate Bill 98 would require that students who commit a sexual assault in schools be expelled for at least one year.

The bill was introduced last year after a state senator found that a student in his district was allowed to stay in class after sexually assaulting another student.

"The issue is not trying to go after particular students to punish them," said Illinois state Sen. Steve McClure (R-Litchfield). "The issue is number one, protecting all the students at the school, and number two, making sure that this student recognizes they did something wrong, and then goes to an alternative education center where they can get treatment and get help."

McClure said there are concerns that sexual assaults in schools are not being reported to parents and are even being swept under the rug.

"Right now, a lot of people are concerned about gun violence in schools — and they should be concerned about that — nobody is talking about something that's really prevalent as well, which is sexual assaults," McClure said. "They're much more prevalent in schools than gun violence is."

Speaking at a news conference with McClure, Springfield public school educator and mother of two Ashley Peden described a harrowing experience that she hoped would demonstrate why the legislation was necessary.

"From late January to early February of last year, my daughter — 10 at the time — was a victim of a weeklong string of admitted sexual assaults. The assaults occurred while was riding the school bus home from school, and while departing from the bus to the bus stop," Peden said. "The sexual assaults were admittedly committed by an older student, 14 at the time, who did not have any form of relationship with my daughter previous to the assaults. He admitted to not even knowing her name."

Peden and her husband obtained an emergency order of protection, and the principal of her daughter's school said there would be a safety plan to ensure her daughter and the teen — an eighth grader at the time — would not come into contact with one another in school or on a school bus.

But no one else knew of the assaults or the safety plan, or was working to prevent sexual assaults from occurring in the school, Peden said.

Peden said after several meetings and court orders, the 14-year-old was finally removed and sent to an alternative school. But even after that, she said the school asked her daughter to switch school buses this year and ride with younger grades as a sixth grader, so the boy could ride the fifth-through-12th-grade bus and attend public school as a ninth grader.

She said her family yet again had to obtain court orders to prohibit the boy from the school bus stop.

"It was never the school that was advocating for the safety of students," Peden said.

The law would apply when assaults happen in school, on a bus, or at a school event.

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