Read in Spanish.

Content warning: This account includes descriptions of alleged sexual assault involving minors.

If you or someone you know has experienced sexual assault, contact RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline. Call 800.656.HOPE (4673), visit RAINN.org/hotline or text “HOPE” to 64673.

HOBBS - Larissa hesitated before opening the door to the discipline room on Monday, April 27. When the first-period bell sounded, the seventh grader inhaled deeply, turned the handle and entered to sit with roughly 10 other students assigned to on-campus suspension at Houston Middle School, their desks turned toward the walls.

A staff member guided 13-year-old Larissa to her seat while classmates chuckled. She did not fit the usual profile for the room. An honor-roll student and favorite of teachers, her only prior mark was a single demerit for using her phone in class the year before.

Larissa kept her eyes down as she took her place and retrieved assignments from her bag, fighting back tears.

On-campus suspension, known as OCS, is normally used for grave violations such as hallway fights, bringing drugs to school or threatening staff.

The event that placed Larissa there was serious: she had informed school leaders that she was raped on campus grounds.

They did not accept her account. Police reached the same conclusion.

Larissa stated clearly that the encounter was not consensual, describing to staff how she was pushed down and attacked. She repeated the account to her mother and to another professional who verified to Searchlight that Larissa maintained she had not consented. That individual requested anonymity due to their role with children. Larissa asked to be identified by her middle name.

An attorney for the boy did not answer questions about the school incident directly, stating in an email that he lacked comment on the consensual nature of the relationship.

A report of this kind should trigger at least two investigations. Under Title IX, school personnel must conduct a full review of the event, address the sensitive issues tied to sexual violence among minors and protect the student’s education. Police should separately examine whether coercion occurred and pursue criminal charges if warranted.

Those steps could include speaking with the nurse who performed the exam, friends, the therapist and other witnesses Larissa may have told.

Experts said investigators should apply trauma-informed methods to review the relationship dynamics, which Larissa and her mother described as abusive, and check for any prior history of violence by either student.

These issues carry extra weight in Hobbs, a community of 52,000 in southeastern New Mexico’s oil and gas area where rape and sexual assault rates run 2.5 times the national average per federal data. State surveys show students in Hobbs face higher rates of sexual assault.

Some states provide stronger legal safeguards than Title IX. New Mexico, however, follows federal rules only.

The state Public Education Department lacks its own law or process for handling reports of sexual assault or harassment between students, according to spokesperson Janelle Garcia. The agency also has no appeal route for claims of mishandled complaints.

Many federal protections have been reduced by staffing cuts and narrower enforcement at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which now prioritizes topics aligned with the Trump administration such as transgender athletes.

Without strong oversight, local school leaders often decide outcomes for sexual assault and gender-based issues on campus.

Hobbs officials viewed the case as straightforward. The students had dated until Larissa ended the relationship weeks earlier, according to her and her mother. Administrators who reviewed video footage concluded she showed no signs of resistance or distress. Superintendent Gene Strickland told Searchlight the evidence did not indicate the child was in distress.

“Anytime we have something of this nature, we run it through a Title IX test,” Strickland said. “Based upon the evidence that we had available, no, we did not believe that Title IX needed to play out.”

“That incident was handled as per juvenile criminal code, as well as Hobbs Schools policies and procedures,” he added.

School leaders treated what Larissa called rape as a code-of-conduct violation that warranted discipline for both students.

Trauma psychology experts note that a lack of visible distress signs, as Strickland described, is a common response.

“The more stressed someone is in a situation like sexual assault, the more likely they are to have an impairment of the rational, deliberative part of their brain,” said Dr. Jim Hopper, a clinical psychologist at Harvard Medical School who trains police and prosecutors worldwide.

“A common thing is at the beginning, when they realize that they’re being assaulted or that they’re about to be assaulted, people will suddenly freeze. Everything will stop. Their mind will go blank. To just look at the video and to simply just dismiss what the child is saying she experienced - that’s not an investigation. That’s incompetence.”

School officials notified police on April 7, the day staff learned the video was spreading. They contacted Larissa’s parents the same day, and her mother picked her up from the principal’s office.

Larissa and her mother drove to a local clinic for a sexual assault exam. Larissa checked a box requesting the results go to law enforcement.

“At least the police will get to the bottom of it,” Ivana Hernandez told her daughter as they left.

Police quickly determined no rape occurred. An incident report stated the encounter between the two 13-year-olds “will be consensual based on their age.”

Instead of probing the alleged rape, officers seized phones of students who shared the video for a possible probe into distribution of explicit images of minors. Reports do not detail the video contents, and it is unclear what portion of the alleged assault was recorded.

Hobbs police declined comment but said the investigation continues.

Deliberate indifference

While Larissa sat in suspension, her mother phoned police repeatedly from home. The detective did not answer, Hernandez said. She also called the school, demanding the infraction be removed from her daughter’s record and that counseling be provided.

Above all, Hernandez said she asked that someone listen to her daughter’s claim of sexual assault.

“She told everyone it was not consensual!” an exasperated Hernandez said in Spanish during an interview. “She told the teachers, she told the principal, she told the police. I was there when she told them. How could they not at least investigate whether she was telling the truth?”

The school stood by its decision, Hernandez recalled. The boy had moved to another district school and would no longer be an issue. The superintendent sent an email of sympathy.

“Please know that I am praying for [Larissa] and your family,” Strickland wrote. “My prayer is that she doesn’t allow the experiences of the last few months define her and allows herself to set a course in front of her that is positive and productive.”

Like many parents, Hernandez was unaware of the Title IX process or applicable state laws. She and Larissa had lived in Hobbs for two years after a series of moves since Hernandez arrived from Guatemala eight years earlier, including time in a women’s shelter to escape domestic violence.

Hernandez watched Larissa’s academic skills grow, a steady point amid moves tied to her father’s work as a nuclear engineer in Georgia, Nevada and now New Mexico.

By seventh grade, Larissa was adjusting. She earned first-chair clarinet, took advanced classes and helped as a teacher’s assistant. Social studies was her favorite subject; she aimed to become an FBI forensic psychologist. She excelled in science and won a bronze medal in anatomy at the State Science Olympiad weeks before the alleged assault.

Socially, the transition proved hard. The shift from elementary to middle school is tough for newcomers, and Larissa faced rigid social hierarchies and bullying common in the district.

More disturbing was the steady flow of fight videos and sexually explicit images on student social media, often appearing on TikTok.

Many clips show student fights, some violent, based on a review of more than 20 videos shared by current and former students. Examples include a student flashing a gang sign with a blood-stained sweatshirt after a high-school stabbing and another convulsing after being kicked in the head.