NYC pays $200K to girl sexually abused, videotaped by Brooklyn HS boys — and school admins fueled ‘dangerous environment’: lawsuit.
Administrators at a Brooklyn high school never punished a group of teen boys who sexually assaulted a female classmate and recorded the abuse, fueling the “dangerous environment” that allowed it to happen, according to a recently-settled lawsuit.
A 14-year-old freshman at Transit Tech High School was forced to perform oral sex in front of other attackers — who recorded it with their cell phones and posted it to social media including TikTok and Snapchat, the suit alleged.
Transit Tech “created a dangerous school environment that condoned sexual abuse and harassment, particularly by a group of offenders who have been allowed to engage in similar despicable conduct without effective reprimand or discipline,” said the suit, filed in Brooklyn federal court by the girl’s mother.
“School officials simply raised their hands and turned their backs on this vulnerable student, encouraging (her) to leave the school, … and allowed the students who abused her to remain at Transit.”
The suit cites a “climate of harassment” at the East New York career and technical school – especially against girls, who make up just 15% of its 797 students.
State data on violent and disruptive incidents in schools shows two sexual offenses and one assault at Transit Tech in 2021-22.
The state also cited 14 reports of discrimination, intimidation, taunting, harassment, or bullying, and 12 cases of drug possession or sales.
The lawsuit names Marlon Bynum, the principal, and Janice Ross, superintendent of Brooklyn North high schools, charging they “were aware that female students were regularly harassed and subjected to abuse and that sexual activity was occurring within the school.”
On Aug. 4, the city agreed to pay a $200,000 settlement, The Post learned. After attorney fees, the girl, now 15, will receive $132,170 when she turns 18.
“No amount of money will compensate my daughter for what she had to go through, and is still going through as a victim of sexual assault,” the girl’s mother told The Post, which is withholding her name to protect the child’s privacy.
The sickening assault — which was not reported publicly at the time — occurred on Oct. 21, 2021, as the girl walked to class through an isolated staircase.
She told cops one boy “pushed her head down” onto another boy, while a third recorded the sex act and posted it on social media, NYPD records show.
She immediately reported the attack.
The NYPD arrested two boys, charging one with criminal sexual assault, a felony, and the other with offensive display, a misdemeanor, records show.
But the charges were dropped a week later after the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office declined to prosecute.
The office does not comment on cases involving juveniles.
“Kids are kids,” the girl’s mother quoted the principal as telling her the next day, she said in sworn testimony.
A DOE report on the incident said “video footage is available.”
But the school erased the school’s surveillance tape before he asked for it, said the girl’s lawyer, Kevin Mosley.
“The cover-up is beyond belief,” Mosley told The Post. “The authorities did not take her seriously.”
About a week after the assault, the girl’s mother received an unsigned email from the DOE saying, “We have … determined that the behavior that was the subject of the investigation did not violate Chancellor’s Regulation A-832,” which prohibits student-on-student discrimination, sexual harassment, intimidation and bullying.
The attackers remained at Transit Tech.
The girl’s parents transferred her to another school.
She “was forced to leave …in fear of her own safety,” suffering physically, emotionally and academically, the suit said. Her attendance and grades fell that year, and she needed counseling.
A city Law Department spokesman said only, “This settlement was in the best interests of the parties.” Bynum, Ross and a DOE spokesman had no response.
The Transit Tech suit comes after another female student at prestigious Brooklyn Tech HS — also under Ross’s supervision — sued the DOE last December, charging administrators botched a probe of horrific sex harassment — erasing nude photos that a boy student used to threaten and blackmail the girl.
In that suit, which is pending, the girl’s parents begged the school to keep their daughter safe from the boy, but he continued to attend Brooklyn Tech after his arrest and while on probation.
