photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Mark Gridley appears Friday, Oct. 3, 2025, with his attorney, Vanessa Riebli, in Douglas County District Court.

Whether speech pathologist Mark Gridley did something criminal when he pulled seven young girls out of class and allegedly tied their hands and blindfolded them as he subjected them to a speech “test” remains to be seen, but there’s no doubt in the minds of two Lawrence school district employees that the actions, if true, were “unethical” and a gross violation of numerous district rules and professional guidelines.

“That would be an extreme concern,” testified Lori Stithem, the district’s executive director of special education, if a speech pathologist were taking kids out of class for any kind of “screening” without a parent’s consent.

Security cameras at Prairie Park Elementary reportedly showed Gridley doing just that over two days in February. On Thursday, Detective Meghan Bardwell testified about that video evidence, which she said showed Gridley ushering a string of girls, one at a time, into his office, the window of which was covered by paper.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

The Lawrence school district’s executive director of special education, Lori Stithem, testifies Friday, Oct. 3, 2025, at the preliminary hearing for Mark Gridley in Douglas County District Court.

Stithem testified that there would never be a reason to take kids into a private setting at school if they didn’t have an Individualized Education Program consented to by their parents. Of the seven girls Gridley allegedly victimized, only two had IEPs, but even for those, she said, such an arrangement would be dubious, emphasizing that determining student needs is not a one-man deal but “very much a team process.”

She said that the district does not do screenings of the type described by the alleged victims in the case. Some screenings, such as for vision and hearing, are performed, but they take place in a group setting, not one by one.

“You go as a class,” she said.

Stithem also said that while the district had no policy per se about covering windows that she would definitely have concerns if a whole window were covered to the extent that there was no visibility into the room, as Gridley’s was said to have been.

On Friday, Gridley appeared before Judge Amy Hanley for the second day of his preliminary hearing, which began with videos of three more Prairie Park Elementary School students describing how they were taken out of class by Gridley and subjected to the “test” in his darkened office. Their accounts, with some variation, were substantially similar to those of four girls whose videotaped accounts were shown Thursday. The sessions, they said, involved bandages being placed over their eyes and their hands being bound with bandages or tape. The object put in their mouth was variously described by the seven as “soft,” “squishy,” warm,” “like skin texture,” “a hot finger,” “like a winky” (a penis) and “hairy.”

Two of the girls said that Gridley told them not to use their teeth or to bite on the thing he put in their mouth, and two said they heard the sound of a zipper. One of the girls whose video was shown Friday said that afterward “I gagged in the trash can, and my hands were shaking.”

The state is contending that the “tests” amounted to oral sex crimes and has charged Gridley with seven counts of aggravated indecent liberties with a child and seven counts of kidnapping — though it remains to be seen if the kidnapping charges will remain after Hanley questioned whether the confinement alleged in this case constituted a separate crime of kidnapping or was an “inherent” part of indecent liberties.

She did not determine that on Friday, but ordered the parties to submit written arguments on the matter by Nov. 14. A month after that, on Dec. 18, she will rule on that question and whether she has found probable cause for Gridley to stand trial on any or all of the 14 counts.

Also testifying Friday was a longtime speech pathologist from Billy Mills Middle School, Kristi Toews, who echoed Stithem in saying that speech issues were identified by parents and classroom teachers, not by speech pathologists doing “screenings,” and that kids should never be taken from the classroom to a private area without parental notification and consent.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Billy Mills Middle School speech pathologist Kristi Toews testifies Friday, Oct. 3, 2025, at the preliminary hearing for Mark Gridley in Douglas County District Court.

When asked by Senior Assistant District Attorney Todd Hiatt what tools a speech pathologist might use, Toews said mirrors were sometimes used to show kids what their mouth is doing is doing when they are speaking, and she also mentioned tongue depressors and lollipops, or possibly a spoon, particularly for kids who have trouble saying “K” and “G” sounds. She said these would be used to hold a child’s tongue in place for certain exercises, but she noted that the kid would normally hold the tongue depressor and would not, under any circumstances, be blindfolded or bound as part of speech and language therapy.

“Never,” she said. “That would be unethical, in my opinion,” in addition to “freaking out” the child.

Also on Friday, Gridley’s defense attorney, Vanessa Riebli, cross-examined Shelby Deist, the forensic interviewer at the Children’s Advocacy Center who conducted the interviews with the seven girls. Riebli asked how many interviews she had conducted in total related to the Gridley matter, and Deist said 20, including both girls and boys. Seven of those, all girl, resulted in “disclosures.”

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Forensic interviewer Shelby Deist of the Children’s Advocacy Center testifies Friday, Oct. 3, 2025, at the preliminary hearing for Mark Gridley in Douglas County District Court.

Riebli appeared to suggest that some of the interviews occurred after the Lawrence Police Department had issued “press releases.” She asked Deist if the releases had insinuated inappropriate touching — as if to put ideas into parents’ heads. Deist said, “I don’t recall” — an answer she gave numerous times, eventually prompting Riebli to tell her she sounded “like a lawyer.”

Riebli suggested at times that Deist’s interviews might have been unduly influenced by police officers who watched them via camera from another room and offered questions to ask when a child wasn’t being forthcoming. She also suggested that Deist might have been predisposed to have certain thoughts.

“Did detectives tell you their belief that (Gridley) had done this to numerous kids?”

“I don’t recall that,” Deist said.

Riebli also suggested through her questioning, as she had done the day before, that the alleged victims might have talked among themselves and “suggested” things to one another. In addition to suggestibility, she also said that kids were sometimes eager to please, leading them to say what they think adults want to hear. Riebli questioned whether Deist had done enough to control for these issues.

In her closing argument, Riebli accused the Lawrence Police Department of having “tunnel vision” during its investigation and not following up on certain leads, like examining the phones of all the alleged victims to see what they were talking about – a criticism that Bardwell had tried to rebut the day before by saying she had looked at one phone and found nothing of evidentiary value.

Douglas County District Attorney Dakota Loomis in his closing emphasized the “consistency” of all seven girls’ accounts, as well as the security camera video confirming their visits to Gridley’s office, the DNA evidence found on items like tape in Gridley’s trash, and the testimony of the school district employees identifying Gridley’s alleged conduct as “grossly out of the norm.”

Riebli asked that probable cause not be found for 12 of the 14 counts, while Loomis asked Hanley to order Gridley to trial on all 14 — a decision that Hanley is now scheduled to render in 11 weeks.

After spending about six months in jail, Gridley is now out of custody on a $750,000 bond with strict monitoring conditions.

As the Journal-World reported, the school district is facing a civil lawsuit accusing it of negligently hiring and retaining Gridley, negligently supervising him, and being vicariously liable for his alleged sexual battery against a child — all claims that the district has denied.

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Mark Gridley appears Friday, Oct. 3, 2025, at his preliminary hearing in Douglas County District Court.