Administrators met her sexual harassment complaints with “continued indifference,” the complaint says. After Riley reported that a classmate had called her a “big, fat, ugly slut,” the school’s principal told Riley that “sometimes the truth hurts,” according to the complaint. And when Riley reported the ongoing harassment to a school counselor, she told Riley, “‘We knew this was going to happen’ because of the sexually explicit video” and did not help her, the complaint says.

“I think this situation is a perfect example of why schools have Title IX obligations,” said Chloe Neely, the lawyer representing Riley in her Title IX complaint. Had the harassment “been addressed in a timely manner, it would have prevented her from leaving the school district altogether.”

The federal Department of Education opened an investigation into Riley’s complaint last August, a spokesperson confirmed. The agency does not comment on ongoing investigations. 

A spokesperson for Cherokee County Schools declined to comment. 

Riley’s Title IX complaint accuses Cherokee County Schools, which has about 2,900 students, of not properly training school staff on how to respond to a complaint of harassment. 

Inadequate training on Title IX — the law that protects students from sex-based discrimination — is common in small districts, like Cherokee County, that have fewer resources than larger districts and may have less experience handling sexual harassment complaints, said Elizabeth Meyer, an associate professor of education at University of Colorado at Boulder.

“There usually aren’t any accountability measures in place to ensure compliance with Title IX,” said Meyer, who was not referring specifically to Cherokee County. And “there is little incentive to be proactive in Title IX education and prevention because there are no regular checks from the Office for Civil Rights.”

The Office for Civil Rights largely focuses on responding to the complaints it receives, rather than monitoring districts for compliance. In fiscal year 2021, the federal agency conducted 17 proactive investigations on issues including racial discrimination, while it resolved more than 8,000 complaints it had received. If the department finds a district mishandled a case, federal officials can require the district to make policy changes. 

The Biden administration has proposed changes to Title IX to better prepare school officials to respond to complaints, including requiring training for all school staff on recognizing sexual harassment and sex discrimination. The changes would also require all school employees to report harassment allegations to the district’s Title IX coordinator, and it would mandate additional training for the coordinator and all other staff members who are involved in resolving complaints. 

The proposed Title IX changes are currently going through a federal review process and could be finalized later this year. 

In fall 2021, Cherokee County administrators told Marcella that they could not look into Riley’s harassment allegations because she had reported the rumored video and alleged assault to the police, and the school needed to wait for the criminal investigation to conclude, the Title IX complaint says. 

But federal regulations require school officials to offer “supportive measures” to students who report being sexually harassed, regardless of whether students make a formal Title IX complaint or report the issue to police. Even if there’s a related criminal investigation, school officials must “respond meaningfully to allegations of sexual harassment,” according to the Department of Education. 

Cherokee County Schools only opened its own investigation in early 2022, after Marcella filed the Title IX complaint and more than three months after the alleged assault. When the district began interviewing students, many said they didn’t remember details, according to notes from the district’s investigation Marcella shared with NBC News.

“Had they been more proactive in talking to students, they would have gotten a lot more information,” Neely said.

The district ultimately recommended discipline for two students, according to the district’s final determination, which Marcella shared. By that point, Riley had already withdrawn from school. 

Jeana Conley, who was superintendent at the time, told NBC News that it was the district’s practice to defer to police. 

“We know now that we could have done those investigations probably parallel,” said Conley, who retired last fall, but “compared to a criminal charge, it seemed like Title IX paled in comparison.”

The football player, whom NBC News is not identifying because of his age, was charged in juvenile court last spring with second-degree forcible rape, sexual battery, felonious restraint, third-degree sexual exploitation of a minor and second-degree sexual exploitation of a minor related to “a visual representation of a minor engaged in sexual activity,” according to court records provided by Marcella. Juvenile court records are not publicly available in North Carolina. 

Last August, the district attorney’s office dropped the restraint and sexual exploitation charges, and soon afterward a district court judge ruled that there was no probable cause to prosecute the football player on the remaining charges, according to the judge’s order provided by Marcella.

The football player’s mother and lawyer both declined to comment.