photo by: Contributed

Michele Collier is pictured with her son, Shawn Danger Collier. The Collier family chose to use their names and photos with this story.

On May 6 five boys went into a bathroom at Free State High School, and a short time later all five came out. That much is certain from cameras in the school’s hallway.

What happened inside the bathroom, however, is less certain. Cameras are obviously not allowed in school bathrooms, but on this day at least one camera, a student’s cellphone, was briefly pulled out to snap a picture — a nude picture — of a special-needs freshman in a vulnerable situation.

The picture was then shared with others, leaving a Lawrence family in turmoil and, ultimately, leading to a police investigation and a possible Title IX probe.

The boy who took the photo — reportedly one of four juniors in the bathroom with the younger boy — insisted in a required written apology to the family that he meant no harm.

“I didn’t take the picture with the purpose of humiliating or making fun of anyone,” he wrote in a one-paragraph note that the school’s assistant principal, Matt Renk, emailed to the freshman boy’s mom. “I’m sincerely sorry the incident was shared.”

The boy in the photo is a 15-year-old named Shawn Danger Collier, who has TAR Syndrome, a rare congenital disorder that affects his heart, immune system and platelet production. Its most noticeable characteristic, though, is the absence of radius bones in the arms, leaving Shawn’s limbs shortened and bent.

Shawn’s middle name, “Danger,” is a nod to what his mother, Michele Collier, was told when doctors urged her to reconsider her pregnancy because it would be “dangerous” and Shawn likely wouldn’t survive.

Shawn did survive, though, and despite sometimes heartbreaking bullying, he somehow developed a great love for school.

“He gets mad if he has to stay home sick,” Michele said. So as soon as he no longer wanted to go to school earlier this month, “that was a huge, huge red flag” that something had happened.

Michele and her husband, Jerry Collier, have requested that the family be identified in this story to underline that they are real people — “people you may know” — not nameless individuals with anonymous complaints.

photo by: Contributed

Jerry Collier is pictured with his son, Shawn Danger Collier. The Collier family chose to use their names and photos with this story.

The school district, citing privacy concerns, declined to share any details about the incident itself and, in fact, was apparently not even aware of it until 13 days after it happened, though Shawn’s mother says that he reported it to Free State employees the day it occurred and that she contacted Free State personnel as soon as she found out, on May 10.

When the Journal-World inquired about the situation on May 19, district spokeswoman Julie Boyle said, “I’m not aware of this. I’ve forwarded your question to Free State.”

According to Michele, based on what Shawn told her and what she learned later from school personnel, Shawn had gone to the bathroom, and, perhaps for attention, to make the other boys laugh, he urinated on the wall. She’s not certain of what all occurred, but at some point a boy photographed Shawn in the nude, and that photo was shared — how widely, she doesn’t know, but Shawn told her that other students had shown him the photo on their phones.

Michele did not know about the picture until a few days after it was taken, she said, when Shawn started acting withdrawn and anxious about going back to school and eventually told her about it. She had previously been informed about the urination because Shawn had been disciplined for that, but the nude photo was news to her.

She immediately emailed a teacher at the school.

“Somebody should have done something about that and contacted us,” she wrote in an email to the teacher, noting that Shawn said he had told Free State employees about the photo that day and had felt ignored.

“No one followed up with us or took steps to ensure Shawn’s safety or emotional well-being,” she wrote later in an email to Renk, the assistant principal.

“We are appalled that older students were unsupervised with him in such a vulnerable situation,” she added.

Michele said that when she first confronted the school about the existence of the photo, she too initially felt disbelieved, but then she was told, yes, such a photo did exist and that it had been “deleted” — small comfort to her since she didn’t know how widely it had spread and also understood that deleted phone photos could be easily retrieved.

Nearly two weeks after the incident, the student who took the photo — “the young man who made the mistake,” as Renk described him — submitted a written apology expressing that his behavior had been “wrong” and regrettable and that he had “learned from my mistake.”

The apology, however well-intentioned, struck Michele as forced, brief and generic. It didn’t even mention Shawn.

Compounding that dissatisfaction was the family’s feeling that officials wanted the incident to just quietly go away. Jerry, her husband, said that law enforcement personnel tied to the school district behaved as if this sort of incident, especially as it involved teen boys, “happened all the time” and that it was probably best to just let it go.

When he mentioned the possibility of filing a police report, which the family eventually did, he said he felt as if they were trying to talk him out of it. A full investigation of that sort could result in Shawn being charged with battery, he was warned, because one of the older boys said that Shawn had punched his backpack — a claim that struck Jerry as “unreal” given the condition of Shawn’s arms.

Michele and Jerry said they requested the police investigation not to “go after” the boy who took the photo, but to get to the bottom of what had happened, including the status of the shared photo, and to ensure accountability and that such incidents are taken seriously and handled accordingly.

Though district-level officials were still unaware of the incident nearly two weeks after it happened, Free State officials apparently brought them up to speed after the Journal-World made inquiries. What they told the district, according to Boyle, the spokeswoman, was that they “immediately investigated” when the concern was reported. “Disciplinary action was taken in accordance with Board policy,” Boyle said, but the nature of the discipline is confidential to “protect student privacy rights.”

The day after the matter was shared with district-level officials, Renk left a voice mail telling Jerry that “The district is going to possibly begin a Title IX investigation into what happened to Shawn” — news that came as relief and “validation” to the Colliers that this was a bigger deal than school-level officials had apparently wanted to admit.

Title IX is the federal law that prohibits discrimination in education based on sex, including sexual harassment, sexual violence and retaliation. Related federal laws likewise prohibit discrimination based on disability.

The Lawrence Police Department has also confirmed that a criminal investigation is underway.

When asked what they want to happen now, Michele, who has tried — and sometimes, heartbreakingly, failed — to be her son’s fierce protector as he has navigated life with physical and emotional challenges, said, “I want something to change.”

“I want somebody to be held accountable and somebody to tell Shawn you’re the victim in this and you’re not alone, because he feels alone.”

photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Free State High School, 4700 Overland Drive, is pictured in May 2025.