A New Jersey college district has been accused of ignoring a baby’s bullying case and making an attempt to silence his household from talking out about it, in line with a brand new lawsuit.
The now 13-year-old plaintiff, who just isn’t named within the lawsuit, claims board members at Montclair Public Colleges did nothing to assist him throughout his one and solely yr within the district, the place he confronted fixed racial and homophobic assaults, NorthJersey.com reported.
The boy and his household alleged that the district not solely tried to brush his case underneath the rug — however additionally they backed a declare made in opposition to the household to scare them from submitting any extra experiences in opposition to his bullies, lawyer Lawrence Kleiner stated.
“They made his life a residing hell in that college,” Kleiner advised the native outlet. “The board did nothing besides flip round and blame him.”
The Montclair Public Colleges district didn’t instantly reply to The Publish’s request for remark.
The scholar’s turmoil started through the 2022-23 college yr when he entered the Northeast Elementary Faculty, the place college students started harassing him and calling him their “spouse,” the criticism alleges.
Issues escalated because the bullies started to taunt him with homophobic slurs and bodily assault him, together with incidents the place they’d kick him in his genitals, the lawsuit claims.
Kleiner stated his consumer doesn’t establish as queer, however the assaults on the sufferer continued all the identical as additionally they focused him for being Asian.
Whereas the bullying initially started with one or two children, Kleiner stated others started becoming a member of in, hurling slurs on the boy and even doing an “Asian rap” video mocking his ethnicity.
The household claims that once they submitted Harassment, Intimidation and Bullying (HIB) experiences, the district was sluggish to reply and ultimately dominated that there was no proof to help their claims.
Because the sufferer’s household fought to enchantment the case, they have been hit by a counterclaim from the household of a pupil implicated in one of many bullying incidents.
Regardless of taking pictures down all of the claims from the sufferer’s household, the declare made in opposition to them was instantly upheld by the board, in what Kleiner stated was a transparent intimidation tactic from the district.
The board voted twice to uphold the declare in opposition to the sufferer regardless of the advice of the then-superintendent and testimony from a psychiatrist that the boy was affected by trauma and stress, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit in opposition to the district comes months after the district’s former anti-bullying coordinator, Maggie Shaver-Dock, filed her personal criticism claiming the district falsified and stymied bullying circumstances to cut back the quantity of experiences it needed to file with the New Jersey Division of Schooling.
Shaver-Dock alleges that she was ordered to change assessments made through the 2022-23 college yr at Northeast, and when she refused, then-Superintendent Jonathan Ponds, who died final yr, made the modifications himself.
The previous worker and the district have been referred to barter a possible settlement on Nov. 3, only a day earlier than the household of the bullying sufferer filed their lawsuit at Superior Court docket.
