‘It was real,’ testifies girl who alleged sexual assault at Chapel Hill elementary school
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- Rebecca Fox says report indicated classmate admitted touching her daughter.
- Fox is suing for damages, tuition, medical costs and the release of public records.
- A federal judge dismissed a similar suit without prejudice; Fox filed a new state case.
When a boy at Frank Porter Graham (FPG) Bilinguë Elementary started inappropriately touching her, the girl at the center of a lawsuit against the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools testified, she first tried to handle it herself by saying stop. The boy didn’t stop.
Then she told her teachers, she testified. Nothing happened. So she told her parents, who pulled her out of school and took her to the doctor. Emily Bivins, then FPG’s principal, interviewed the girl, and she told her what happened.
“It wasn’t a game. It wasn’t playing. It was real, and it hurt,” the girl testified in Orange County Superior Court on Thursday, firm in her delivery.
The girl’s mother, Rebecca Fox, sued CHCCS, Bivins and former FPG Spanish teacher Pablo Valencia in April 2025, accusing the defendants of engaging “in a coordinated pattern of concealing sexual abuse, failing to report and creating a culture of silence that harmed all plaintiffs.”
The lawsuit seeks at least $25,000 in damages, reimbursement for private school tuition fees and medical costs and the immediate production of all public-records requests.
Fox testified Wednesday and Thursday. She was a speech language pathologist at FPG at the time her daughter, then a kindergarten student, first alleged sexual assault in 2019. The News & Observer is naming Fox because she has spoken publicly about the case.
Federal court judge William Osteen Jr. dismissed a similar lawsuit in November 2022. Osteen concluded no reasonable jury could find that CHCCS “responded to Plaintiff’s report of sexual assault with deliberate indifference” and that Bivins did not deny Fox’s daughter of her right to equal protection or due process.
Osteen dismissed the case without prejudice, meaning the case could be filed again in state court. CHCCS denies any wrongdoing, and no criminal charges have been filed against Bivins or Valencia.
Between 2011 and 2025, CHCCS did not report any sexual offenses against students at FPG to the N.C. Department of Public Instruction, The N&O previously reported.
The girl’s testimony
The plaintiff’s attorney, Shayla Richberg, first asked Fox’s daughter if she enjoyed kindergarten. The girl testified she did not, because the boy “hurt her.”
“When did [he] first start hurting you?” Richberg asked.
Fox’s daughter turned her head toward her chest. Her face went red, and she squeezed her eyes closed as she tried to stop herself from crying out loud. Judge Allen Baddour reached across his bench to point the girl to tissues.
After a minute or two, Baddour sent the jury out and allowed Fox’s daughter to step down. The girl walked into Fox’s embrace, crying as she laid her head on her chest and her mother kissed her softly on her cheek.
After roughly 10 minutes and a chat with Richberg outside the courtroom, Fox and her daughter returned, and Baddour brought the jury back in. The girl took the stand again, taking deep breaths and letting out firm exhales before she gave answers.
When asked about a deposition she gave when she was 8 years old about the alleged abuse stemming back to pre-kindergarten, Fox’s daughter testified that the deposition was not true and that her memories were mixed up from that time period.
The girl also said she could not remember when she told teachers about the abuse or which teachers she told — but she told them “many times” prior to Oct. 31, 2019.
Fox: ‘Felt like pulling teeth’ to get safety plan
Fox testified that on Nov. 1, 2019, her daughter complained of pain Fox thought was just from a diaper rash. When Fox took a look, she saw redness, she testified. Fox asked her daughter if anyone had touched her. Her daughter told her and Fox’s husband a boy at school touched her on Oct. 31.
“I was just shocked,” Fox testified, her voice breaking. “I was shocked.”
Fox testified she emailed Bivins, then-assistant principal Karen Galassi-Ferrer, her daughter’s teachers and the school’s counselor. Bivins interviewed Fox’s daughter on Nov. 5, 2019, with Fox and her husband present.
Fox secretly recorded the interview, the audio from which was played for the jury Wednesday. Fox testified she recorded the meeting because she wasn’t confident the issue would be handled properly.
In the interview, Bivins asked Fox’s daughter about the touching and tickling, if the boy had touched anyone else, if she liked the touching and if she was nervous to go back to class. Bivins told Fox’s daughter three times that when a student tells another to stop touching them, the touching should stop.
“You are super brave to tell me all the things that have happened to you,” Bivins said to Fox’s daughter.
Bivins said she would interview other children, talk to police and assistant teachers, and offered to move Fox’s daughter to another class, Fox testified.
But Fox testified she kept her daughter at home for three weeks because she wanted a step-by-step safety plan and did not believe her daughter should have to change classrooms for something done to her. FPG contacted the police and had the school counselor conduct a safe touch lesson, Fox testified, but the school did not create “what I would consider a safety plan” — instead, she called it a “nominal plan.”
“And it felt like pulling teeth to get it,” Fox testified.
After speaking with higher-ups at CHCCS, Fox was told there would be more supervision during recess and that the boy would move to a different class instead of her daughter, she testified. Fox’s daughter returned to school, and Fox took a site visit of the FPG playground with the new supervision protocol in place.
But while there were more adults, Fox observed they were still all concentrated in the middle, she testified. And within a few days of returning to school, Fox’s daughter told her that the boy who had assaulted her had threatened her again, and the teachers at the playground “were not watching.”
Fox and her husband asked for reassurance from then Senior Executive Director of Leadership and Strategy Misti Williams that the boy was not in contact with her daughter, Fox testified. Williams sent their concerns to Bivins. Bivins said FPG had investigated the matter and did everything they could, Fox testified.
After that, Fox testified, she and her husband removed their daughter from the district.
“It was minimized and diminished to be normal kindergarten boundary pushing,” Fox testified. “And it was not.”
Fox testified she did not receive the investigation report until April 2020 — after her lawyer sent a letter to Bivins demanding the report. The report, she testified, confirmed that the boy told FPG administration he had touched Fox’s daughter in inappropriate areas.
Fox also testified to reading emails showing Bivins told Williams on Nov. 21 she formally requested Fox’s daughter be moved to Carrboro Elementary School. Williams called Fox to offer that option, Fox testified. Bivins emailed Galassio-Ferrer on Dec. 2, Fox testified, who had just been promoted to principal of FPG.
“This just won’t end,” Bivins wrote, Fox testified. “Go to Carrboro, already.”
Defense cross-examines Fox
Representing Bivins, Valencia and CHCCS, defense attorney Rodney Pettey asked Fox Thursday if she knew UNC Health records did not document any injuries to her daughter. Fox admitted she was aware of those records now but testified she didn’t know about them at the time.
Pettey then walked through emails Fox exchanged with Bivins where the former FPG principal shared a plan to ensure adults monitoring the playground were in specific zones, Fox testified. Fox testified that was not satisfactory to her because that should have already been the protocol.
Pettey asked Fox about emails her daughter’s teacher, Selene Paque, sent to Bivins. Paque wrote that she kept her eyes on Fox’s daughter, while other staff members watched the boy. Paque observed that the two never came near each other during recess. Fox testified that when she visited the playground, she did not observe teachers at their specified zones.
Pettey turned Fox to a deposition she gave before the trial, when she said while her husband gave a bath to her daughter in the spring of 2020, her daughter told him “I lied. You know, [the boy] never touched me. None of that ever happened. It was a lie.”
Fox testified Thursday that she thought she heard that, but her daughter and husband told her after the deposition she didn’t say she lied — and she, therefore, no longer stood by that deposition. Fox’s daughter also testified she never told her dad she had lied.
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