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The family of a 7-year-old nonverbal child with autism is suing the Jennings County School Corp. for allegedly violating federal anti-disability discrimination laws after their son was repeatedly sexually assaulted on a school bus by an older student.
Carmel-based Wagner Reese LLP filed the lawsuit on behalf of the family in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana on April 1 – the day after a Jennings County jury convicted the classmate, 16-year-old Landon Doty, on four counts of rape. Doty will be sentenced later this month.
Doty is referred to as Student 2 in the complaint.
The lawsuit accuses JCSC, the school bus driver and a bus monitor with gross negligence and with violating Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibits public schools from discriminating against students based on disability.
Jennings County Superintendent Nicole Johnson did not immediately respond to The Indiana Lawyer’s request for comment.
According to court documents, Doty repeatedly sexually and physically assaulted the child — a second-grade student at Sand Creek Elementary School — on a Jennings County special needs school bus between February 2025 and April 2025. Bus surveillance cameras captured the assaults over several weeks, but neither school employee intervened.
The child shared a seat with Doty as an informal restraint, violating the child’s Individual Education Program, Wagner Reese said.
The complaint states that due to his autism diagnosis, the child had difficulty sitting still and would occasionally get up from his seat while riding to school. Although the school employees had restraints available to keep the child in his seat, the complaint alleges, the employees instead assigned the child to sit in a bus seat with Doty so that he could physically block and restrain the child from moving around during transport.
The child was assigned to sit in a window seat, with Doty on the outside, blocking him, the complaint states. The child and Doty sat in the back of the bus. According to the complaint, the child and Doty were the only students on the bus required to share a seat.
The complaint alleges that on 14 occurrences, the JCSC bus driver and monitor failed to monitor the students, all while Doty sexually and physically assaulted the child in their shared seat.
During almost all of the noted instances, Doty anally and orally raped the child, the complaint states.
While the bus transported students, neither the bus driver nor the monitor checked on the child and Doty, the complaint states. The monitor spent much of the time the child was abused looking forward.
During the afternoon bus trip on April 15, 2025, the date of the last occurrence, Doty orally raped the child and repeatedly hit the child on the head, the complaint states. At about 3:05 p.m., Doty pulled the child onto his lap and anally raped him.
A minute later, the bus monitor saw the child on Doty’s lap and asked what was going on. The monitor then separated Doty from the child and asked for the videotapes to be pulled.
As a result, Doty was arrested.
The family now accuses the school, bus driver and monitor of negligence, while also holding JCSC independently responsible for failing to train its employees and failing to implement policies to “keep special needs children safe” while being transported on district buses.
“Schools have a duty to protect the children under their care and in their custody, especially the most vulnerable,” said Stephen Wagner, a partner and personal injury attorney at Wagner Reese, in a press release Monday. “When school corporations fail to meet this duty, they can be held liable for the harms resulting from the wrongful actions and inactions of their employees.”
The family requests a trial by jury and $9.8 million in damages – $700,000 for each of the 14 occurrences.
The case is JANE DOE, individually, and JOHN DOE, a minor, by and through his parent and next friend, JANE DOE v. Jennings County School Corporation, et al. (4:26-cv-0085).
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