The federal case names the district, the bus driver, the bus monitor and the district’s insurers after a teenager’s criminal conviction.
JENNINGS COUNTY, IN — The family of a 7-year-old boy with autism has sued Jennings County School Corporation, saying the child was repeatedly beaten and sexually assaulted on a special-needs school bus over seven weeks in 2025 before staff acted.
The lawsuit, filed April 2 in U.S. District Court in New Albany, came one day after a Jennings County jury convicted 16-year-old Landon Doty in the related criminal case. The civil complaint says the district, bus driver Scott Alcorn and bus monitor Tanya Perry failed to protect a nonverbal second grader whose disability, school records and transportation plan all showed he needed close support. The family is seeking $10.5 million in damages, a jury trial and findings that the district violated the boy’s civil rights and disability protections.
According to the complaint, the boy was a student at Sand Creek Elementary School in North Vernon and rode a Jennings County special transportation bus required under his individualized education plan. The suit says school staff knew he had autism, struggled to communicate, had trouble reading danger and sometimes got out of his seat during rides. Even so, the complaint says, adults assigned him to share a back seat with an older student described in the filing as “Student 2,” a teen with known behavioral problems and a larger build. The family says restraints were available to keep the younger child seated but were not used. Instead, the suit says, the older student was used to block him from moving. “John Doe and Student 2 were the only students on the bus required to share a seat,” the complaint says.
The filing lays out a timeline from Feb. 27 through April 16, 2025, and says the child was assaulted on 14 separate bus trips. It describes the first reported incident on Feb. 27 as bullying and physical violence during the afternoon ride. The next day, the suit alleges, the older student physically and sexually assaulted the boy and anally raped him while a substitute monitor sat at the front of the bus. The complaint then lists more alleged assaults on March 3 and March 10 and says the abuse continued over the next several weeks. At least two surveillance cameras were operating on the bus, the filing says, and many of the incidents were captured on video. The family argues that the repeated nature of the attacks shows the problem was not a single missed warning but a long failure in supervision.
The criminal case turned on that bus video. Prosecutors argued that the footage showed Doty assaulting the child during repeated rides, and jurors watched hours of recordings before returning guilty verdicts. Doty, who was tried as an adult, was convicted on multiple felony counts, including rape, child molesting, sexual battery, criminal confinement and public indecency. During trial, Doty denied sexually assaulting the child and said he had been using “calming techniques.” On the witness stand, Doty said, “I was bouncing him on my knee like a kid.” His lawyers also argued that bus staff did not see sexual activity and that DNA evidence did not tie him to the child. Prosecutors answered that the video itself was central evidence. A bus monitor’s intervention on April 17, 2025, after seeing Doty push the younger boy off his lap, led to a review of the recordings and helped bring the case into the open.
The civil lawsuit goes beyond the criminal verdict by focusing on the school system’s choices before the assaults were discovered. The family says district staff knew the younger boy was especially vulnerable and knew the older student had already shown aggressive behavior toward another child. Even so, the suit says, the district placed both boys together in the back of the bus, where the younger child sat by the window and was effectively trapped. The filing alleges Perry at times stayed near the front or failed to walk all the way to the rear, while Alcorn drove without properly monitoring what was happening behind him. The complaint also says the district lacked adequate transportation safety rules, failed to properly evaluate the child’s transportation needs and did not make reasonable accommodations required for a disabled student. It says the boy has suffered physical pain, emotional distress, humiliation, anxiety, regression in skills, loss of educational benefit and loss of enjoyment of life.
The legal claims are broad. The family alleges negligence, negligent infliction of emotional distress and negligence per se under state law. It also brings federal civil rights claims under 42 U.S.C. Section 1983, arguing that the driver and monitor created or increased danger to the child by forcing him to sit next to the older student and then failing to supervise the ride. Another claim accuses the district of violating Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, which requires schools receiving federal money to provide safe and appropriate access to services for students with disabilities. The complaint names the district’s insurers, LM Insurance Corporation and Liberty Insurance Corporation, because the family wants the court to determine what coverage may apply if the district is found liable. The case was filed under the names Jane Doe and John Doe to shield the family’s identity.
The story has shaken Jennings County because it mixed one of the most ordinary parts of the school day with one of the most serious kinds of harm. The alleged abuse happened on a bus used for children needing special transportation, not in an unsupervised setting away from school control. That detail sits at the center of the family’s argument. Their lawyers say adults were present, cameras were recording and the district had specific knowledge of the younger child’s disability and needs. The civil filing says that made the danger more preventable, not less. The mother’s claims in the complaint say she suffered severe emotional distress after learning her son had been assaulted “in the presence of a bus driver, bus monitor, and at least two cameras” on repeated trips. By filing in federal court, the family is asking not only for damages but also for a court record that examines how the transportation system operated day after day while the attacks allegedly continued.
The criminal case is not over. Doty is scheduled to be sentenced April 27. In the civil case, Jennings County School Corporation and the other defendants will have a chance to respond in court filings, and the case is expected to move next into the early stages of federal litigation, including appearances, answers and scheduling orders. For now, the district faces a detailed complaint that ties the boy’s injuries not only to one teenager’s conduct but to a school transportation setup the family says left a vulnerable child exposed for weeks.
Author note: Last updated April 4, 2026.