News Archive

Professor Jennifer Drobac was interviewed by WRTV news in connection with the case against a former high school football coach and his alleged inappropriate sexual relationship with a student.

Tyler Bruce was a football coach at Tri-West High School in Hendricks County. The school district received anonymous tips accusing the coach of being in the weight room alone with the student as early as February 2019. The following month, the high school principal told administrators that any further information on the allegations should be brought directly to him. The child's parents were not contacted, and neither was the Indiana Department of Child Services (DCS). The sheriff's department and DCS were not contacted until May 2019.

“It should have been investigated,” Professor Drobac said in the interview. “The fact that the parents didn’t know, police didn’t know, and school officials did not report this — it’s not debatable. This is clearly, if true, a violation of law and this child was not protected.” She also utilized the interview to reminded viewers that everyone is a mandated reporter of suspected child abuse and neglect.

Professor Drobac’s latest book, Sexual Exploitation of Teenagers: Adolescent Development, Discrimination, and Consent Law, was published in 2016 by University of Chicago Press. Professor Drobac was a Visiting Scholar during the Spring 2018 semester at Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics, and Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Law, Brain and Behavior. She was there conducting research for her next book, The Myth of Consent, which she is co-writing with Professor Oliver Goodenough. That work will explore the neuroscience of adult decision making and how the science should influence law reform. She is a Samuel R. Rosen Professor of Law.