A weekend JROTC trip to a West Virginia training camp has turned into a furious standoff between a Fayette County mother and the high school she says kept her in the dark. The Preston County Sheriff's Office responded to a reported sexual assault at Camp Dawson on Saturday, September 26, during a two-night cadet trip involving students from Albert Gallatin High School. Days later, parents say the school still hasn't told them what happened.
According to CBS News, Camp Dawson is a military training installation in neighboring West Virginia used for regional cadet exercises, which makes the investigation a cross-state matter even though the fallout is playing out entirely in Fayette County classrooms and living rooms. Parent Brittney Metts said cadets on the trip were instructed not to discuss what happened, and that one frightened student ended up sleeping on the floor in front of a barracks door. Metts said school officials refused to answer her questions Monday about when administrators learned of the assault and why families weren't immediately notified. Her daughter was in her first year with the JROTC program.
A Program Unique to the County
Albert Gallatin is the only district out of 23 public school districts in Fayette County to offer a JROTC program at all, the station notes, underscoring just how closely watched this single unit now is. JROTC units like Albert Gallatin's are established through local agreements between school districts and military service branches, giving the program a hybrid identity that answers to both the school board and the armed forces.
That dual structure is part of what's complicating the question of who owes parents answers. Metts' complaint centers on what she says was the district's failure to notify parents promptly. Under 22 Pennsylvania Code § 10.25, as outlined by the Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute, public school entities must immediately notify parents or guardians of a student victim or suspect directly involved in serious incidents reportable to law enforcement. Separately, Act 44 of 2025, which took effect in January, requires Pennsylvania K-12 schools to notify parents and staff within 24 hours of safety incidents on school property or at school-sponsored events, according to Ogletree Deakins.
Not the County's First JROTC Scandal This Year
This isn't Fayette County's first brush with JROTC misconduct in 2026. In March, former Air Force JROTC instructor Daniel Cervone was arrested by Pennsylvania State Police and charged with institutional sexual assault for an alleged ongoing sexual relationship with a 15-year-old student at Laurel Highlands High School, as WPXI reported at the time. Cervone had previously received a regional Air Force outstanding instructor award in 2023.
That case, paired with back-to-back arrests of Laurel Highlands teachers, pushed Pennsylvania State Representative Charity Grimm Krupa to ask the state Attorney General to investigate school districts across Fayette County for systemic oversight failures, Patch reported. Fayette County District Attorney Mike Aubele also launched his own inquiries into teacher misconduct in neighboring districts, adding another layer of scrutiny to a county already on edge. Hoodline previously covered the Laurel Highlands classroom kiss case as part of that spring's wave of arrests.
A National Pattern Behind the Local Case
The Albert Gallatin case also lands amid a broader reckoning over JROTC safety nationwide. A U.S. Government Accountability Office report from August 2025 estimated that between 2% and 7% of U.S. high schools offering JROTC programs had an instructor who was the subject of an adult sexual misconduct allegation over a five-year period. The same GAO report found the Department of Defense provided roughly $439 million in funding for JROTC programs across more than 3,400 public high schools nationwide in fiscal year 2024, with each military service branch jointly administering local units alongside host schools.
The scrutiny isn't new. Media reports in October 2024 revealed at least 21 new cases of alleged sexual abuse against JROTC cadets surfacing across multiple states, driving calls for expanded federal oversight and standardized safety agreements, according to 13News Now. Similar JROTC misconduct allegations have surfaced elsewhere this year, including an Akron instructor accused of striking a cadet, previously reported by Hoodline.
For now, the investigation into what happened at Camp Dawson remains with the Preston County Sheriff's Office, while Fayette County parents like Metts are left pressing Albert Gallatin administrators for answers about notification timelines that, under Pennsylvania law, were supposed to come quickly.
