Attorney reveals details in alleged bullying of special-needs student

Oct. 27—Bakersfield attorney Daniel Rodriguez held a news conference Wednesday at his downtown offices to announce that his firm, Rodriguez & Associates, is representing the special-needs student who he and many others believe was bullied and humiliated on video last Wednesday at Arvin High School.

The video shows and witnesses indicate, he said, that one or more security personnel on campus stood by and did nothing to put a stop to the incident.

"What is going on in the high school district?" Rodriguez said. "They all talk about having measures in place."

"It's not just isolated to Arvin High School," he said. "We have a number of other cases."

Rodriguez graduated from Arvin High, however, and for him, this case is personal.

"What we have here is a 16-year-old boy with special needs, who has learning disabilities," he said. "He didn't learn to read and write until he was 11 years old.

"When you're a special-needs child, you don't necessarily fit in. But you want to fit in. You want to be accepted. You want friends."

That makes special-needs kids easy to manipulate, easy to target, he said.

Then last week, one of those "friends" tells the boy he needs a haircut, and offers to give him one out on the quad, near the center of campus.

Around lunchtime, many students were gathered, Rodriguez said, as if some kind of show was about to begin.

"He goes to work on him, and he's no barber," Rodriguez said. "He's butchering his hair."

Then another student joins in, and then another.

"They grab the clippers and start to work on him, and they're digging into his scalp," Rodriguez said.

"He starts to cry."

Students surround him. They use their phones to shoot video of the incident.

"You can hear him cry. You can see him cry," Rodriguez said. "And they're taunting him: 'You crybaby. Man up.'"

What makes this particularly egregious, the attorney said, is there was at least one campus security guard present.

"How do we know that?" Rodriguez asked. "You can see him in the video.

"What's he doing? He's laughing. He's joining in," Rodriguez said. "Instead of protecting, instead of putting a stop to it, he's joining in in the laughter, in the mocking."

The good news, Rodriguez said, is there are good people in the world. A student — Rodriguez was told he is a football player — entered the area to help the 16-year-old special-needs boy.

"You can see he walks into the video, and he's like, 'Stop it. What are you guys doing?' And he's slapping the phone out of some of the other students' hands," Rodriguez said. "And he takes the boy and leads him away."

Rodriguez hopes to be able to talk to the good Samaritan.

A separate security guard did come, Rodriguez said. She carried the boy to safety in her golf cart-like vehicle.

Rodriguez and associate attorney Danay Gonzalez have some hard questions about how the school responded.

"Unfortunately, the school did not call the mom," Gonzalez said. "She found out about it through her sister. Her sister saw it online ... and she tells her, 'Hey you need to see this video. Something is wrong with your son. You have to go pick him up right now.'"

Gonzalez and Rodriguez believe when the mother, Avelina Santiago, arrived at the office, school officials tried to shift the blame to her son.

"But again, there's hope in this world," Rodriguez said.

Last Friday, the controversy drew a crowd of hundreds of Arvin High students, alumni, parents and other residents to the campus that morning. Residents were outraged.

A representative with the Kern high School District did not respond to a phone call and an email sent Wednesday afternoon.

But school officials did issue a statement to parents and students last week in response to the incident:

"Arvin High School administration is aware of a video circulating on social media. The behavior exhibited in the video is clearly unacceptable, and we do not condone bullying of any kind. When students breach the boundaries of acceptable behavior, they will be held accountable for their actions, and the school will provide support to any affected student. This incident is being thoroughly investigated, and appropriate disciplinary actions will be taken."

And on Friday, district spokeswoman Erin Briscoe-Clarke said the district and campus officials are looking into the incident, and that two of the school's employees have been placed on leave during the course of the investigation.

Rodriguez said more investigation needs to be completed before he knows exactly what he's working with.

Before a lawsuit can be filed, a government tort claim must first be filed.

If that happens, the district would have 45 days to respond, but Rodriguez said these claims are routinely rejected. Then a lawsuit can be filed if he believes one is called for.

Reporter Steven Mayer can be reached at 661-395-7353. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter: @semayerTBC.