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A Waipahu high school student said school officials ignored repeated pleas for help and even told her not to call the police when she complained about being sexually assaulted by a coach.

Her father didn’t get any help from the Hawaii Department of Education either. The episode has concerned parents and a Waipahu lawmaker saying they’ve lost faith in the department’s ability to protect their children.

“For a department that talks so much about accountability, I don’t see any accountability,” said state Sen. , who represents Waipahu, Pearl City and Crestview. He is also a former vice principal. “For a department that says they care about the kids, they really don’t show any evidence of that. Protecting each other is fine, but you need to hold each other accountable.”

The department is currently conducting a review of the actions taken by Waipahu High School officials, a spokeswoman told Civil Beat.

The 17-year-old Waipahu High School student, a senior, told a vice principal in October that 37-year-old track and field coach Erik Y. Tamura of Wahiawa had sexually assaulted her on at least three occasions. Vice Principal Corinne Fujieda told the principal, but school officials never called the police and instead conducted an in-house investigation that they said found the track coach innocent of the allegations. He was never suspended, only asked to “apologize” to his accuser.

But the student’s father made even less progress with the Department of Education itself. He felt Principal Keith Hayashi and Athletic Director Stacy Nii were just trying to protect Tamura and the school’s reputation. So he tried for months to get officials at every level of the department to reopen the investigation. But every person he called passed him on to someone else.

“It’s like a fort,” he said of the department. “It just folded up on me.”

“From the beginning, I felt like she didn’t have a chance. I felt the principal and vice principals already had drawn their conclusion about why she reported (Tamura). They were trying to keep everybody quiet, so I started going above them. I went to Child Protective Services, then the Sexual Abuse Treatment Center and (Honolulu Police Department) was my last resort.”

Civil Beat granted the student and her father anonymity in order to protect the identity of the victim.

In December, the student’s father resorted to contacting a Florida-based organization that helps connect victims of sexual harassment with attorneys. The attorney advised him to call the police. He filed a report on Dec. 16 and on Feb. 8 Tamura had his initial court appearance on three charges of third-degree sexual assault.

Despite his court appearance, it was that Waipahu High School officials put Tamura on paid leave.

Parents at the school did not receive a letter about the investigation from the school until Feb. 9 — after local news outlets broke the story.

Barbara Ugalde, who has a son on the track team at the school, said she is angry over what she feels is a lack of protection for the students, and the lack of communication from the school.

“I’m very supportive of the public education system, but this threw me for a loop, and I’ve never been more disappointed in a group of people in my life,” she said. “I don’t trust them. They took our trust, as parents, and just flushed it down the toilet. The school system has failed every parent who has had a child at Waipahu High School since Tamura started working there.”

Hawaii, We Have a Problem

This is not the first time in recent history that the department has been accused of neglecting its duty to protect students. The Honolulu Police Department last year accused of sexually abusing fellow students at the Hawaii School for Deaf and Blind — a scandal that school district officials allegedly knew about for at least a year and a half before doing anything.

Nishihara, the lawmaker, says the inaction of school officials in these and similar cases points to a lack of accountability among those managing the state’s public schools.

“I feel that the administration dropped the ball on it,” he said. “They should have talked to the police. When you’re talking about a possible criminal violation, the school is not qualified to make that determination. You need to let the police make that call.”

mandates that the Board of Education require a report “to appropriate authorities from a teacher, official, or other employee of the department” who happens to know of crime-related incidents occurring on school campus.

But even police can’t force school officials to fire faculty guilty of . Hawaii has a history of keeping teachers charged with sexual misconduct on the payroll even while they serve sentences for various sex crimes, according to an of criminal records from 2001 to 2005.

Nishihara likens the handling of the Waiphahu High School case to the recent in which university officials failed to follow through on allegations that an assistant football coach had sexual contact with young boys on campus.

“From the outside looking in, it looks like they’re trying to cover it up,” he said. “Maybe they’re not, but that’s what it looks like, unfortunately.”

Nishihara said state officials need to hold principals accountable for students’ safety — something that isn’t happening in part because principals are protected by a union.

“You have an obligation, it’s called , which means you take on the responsibility of a parent for these students. When you start thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve gotta protect a teacher,’ you’re missing the whole point. When they want to protect the personnel and aren’t looking out for the child, they’ve lost sight of their mission.”

A Proposed Solution

The senator’s solution, which he introduced in the Legislature this session in the form of : Take principals out of the union.

Education officers, which include principals and vice principals, have been members of the Hawaii Government Employees Association since 1970 when all public employees were given the opportunity to select their own unions.

But Nishihara says unionization of principals is an unnecessary impediment to the superintendent’s ability to fire education officers for failing to perform their jobs well. While his proposal won’t necessarily push complex area and state officials to investigate employee misconduct more aggressively, he says it will make accountability easier on one level.

“You want to eliminate some of those layers that serve as impediments to accountability,” he said. “I’m trying to make it so that whoever is the superintendent is responsible for these people and ultimately, the governor as well.”

The Senate Education Committee has not scheduled a hearing for Nishihara’s bill, but he hopes lawmakers will be open to discussing ways to improve accountability for the officials responsible for keeping students safe.