New York schoolgirl secretly photographed while in the shower is bullied viciously after classmates share snaps
A schoolgirl from Staten Island was photographed secretly while she was in the shower by a classmate, who then shared those snaps with other students who bullied her viciously, a lawsuit claims.
To make matters worse, the court papers claim, administrators at IS 7 in Huguenot were allegedly not interested in taking action and getting to the bottom of the incident, neither did they discipline the girls behind the incident in May 2017.
According to New York Post, the students were ordered by the middle-school authorities to delete the nude pictures of the 12-year-old girl from social media and their phones before the police arrived to investigate the incident.
Identified as 'J.A.' in the court papers, the alleged victim has transferred to another school in a different borough since the incident, but it has not offered her any relief. The IS 7 students who bullied her continue to torment the victim online by "creating false Instagram accounts for the sole purpose of taunting and mocking," her family claims.
Throughout her school days, the 12-year-old has suffered abuse including when she was in elementary school at PS 55 in Eltingville. Back in her elementary school, the kids allegedly pulled her hair, slapped, pinched her and called her a gorilla. They also claimed she had AIDS and Down Syndrome, the Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit that was filed against the city and the Department of Education claims.
Those very same students who bullied the victim followed her to IS 7, where she was threatened physically. J.A. has also had her book thrown in the garbage and was called ugly, her parents claims. The names of the parents are being withheld to protect their daughter.
The court papers also claim that both the schools did not take any meaningful actions against the abuse even though the victim's parents complained repeatedly. But reached a breaking point when the victim was showering at a sleepover, and one of the girls took a picture of her and ignored her plea to delete it. "Don’t worry, no one will see it," the girl who took the picture claimed.
But, she went on to share the picture with another student who went ahead and posted it to her Instagram profile that consisted of 200 followers. All of those followers were IS 7 kids, the parents claim.
According to the legal filings, after the girl notified her parents, they immediately complained to the school, only to have the assistant principal tell the students, "with the photographs on their phone to delete said photographs prior to law enforcement’s arrival."
Her parents who are seeking unspecified damages state their complaints about the never-ending online bullying have also been ignored. They added that the DOE showcased, "deliberate indifference" to their daughter.
“The DOE dropped the ball. The school allowed our client to be subjected to bullying that was taken to the extreme,” Imran Ansari the family lawyer told the New York Post. A spokesman for the DOE shared that the department takes bullying seriously and that they would review the lawsuit.