Brooklyn’s Transit Tech High School will pay $200,000 to a 14-year-old former student after they failed to punish a group of boys who raped her on campus and published a video of the attack online.
The civil suit the girl and her family brought on alleged a “dangerous environment” at the school.
The lawsuit named Marlon Bynum, the principal of East New York’s High School of Transit Technology, and Janice Ross, the Brooklyn North district superintendent. It claimed that school officials were aware of the incident or other similar events and did nothing.
The lawsuit alleges school officials “were aware that female students were regularly harassed and subjected to abuse and that sexual activity was occurring within the school.” It also states they “were aware that female students were regularly harassed and subjected to abuse and that sexual activity was occurring within the school… particularly by a group of offenders who have been allowed to engage in similar despicable conduct without effective reprimand or discipline.”
The girl’s lawyer, Kevin Mosley, also alleged that the school erased surveillance footage of the attack.
According to a report from the Daily Mail:
The suit also cites a ‘climate of harassment’ that paved the way for the previously unreported assault – which took place on October 21, 2021, as the girl walked to class through an isolated staircase.
The girl, who was either 13 or 14, immediately reported the attack – telling cops one boy ‘pushed her head down’ onto another boy to perform oral sex, while a third recorded and then posted it to platforms including TikTok and Snapchat.
The girl’s mother claims that the principal told her after the attack, “kids are kids.”
Two of the boys were quickly arrested by the NYPD. One was charged with sexual assault, and the other was charged with misdemeanor offensive display. However, the charges were dropped when Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez declined to prosecute them.
