Brooklyn school officials sent a 13-year-old girl home after she reported she was raped by a classmate — telling her to move on with her life while bullies distributed a video of the attack and taunted her, a shocking lawsuit charges.
The victim was a happy eighth-grader at Spring Creek Community School who made good grades when she was raped in an alley just two blocks from campus in 2015, according to the suit filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court on Friday.
Now 17 and a rising senior at another city school, the teen, who wants to remain anonymous, suffers depression and suicidal thoughts thanks to Spring Creek officials’ callous and irresponsible handling of the matter, the suit charges.
Prominent Brooklyn attorney Carrie Goldberg, who is litigating the case, seeks unspecified damages from the city and school officials for the girl and her family.
Goldberg said administrators at the East New York school victimized the girl for reporting her rape — and that similar incidents happen too often.
In June, Goldberg won a settlement of nearly $1 million from the city over school officials’ treatment of another Brooklyn student who reported she was raped at another school.
“Children are not taught consent at school and administrators do not act lawfully or humanely when students — particularly girls of color — report sexual violence,” Goldberg said. “It’s criminal when our kids go to school and come home raped, humiliated and told they aren’t welcome there anymore.”
According to Goldberg’s suit, the girl was waiting for a bus near the school when another 13-year-old student forced her into an alley and raped her, filming the attack with a cell phone.
But when the girl reported the incident to a school counselor days later, the counselor bushed her off, telling her “if it happened, it happened — move on with your life,” the suit charges.
As the rapist’s video of the attack went viral at the school, Spring Creek officials contacted police, who interviewed the girl, but she was too confused and intimidated to press charges, the suit says.
And in a subsequent meeting with the girl and her mother, Principal Christina Koza strongly recommended she stay home from school while officials got the video “under control” and said the girl’s presence would just “make things worse,” according to the suit.
When the girl attempted to return to school, Koza told her she had seen the video and it “looked consensual” to her, the suit charges.
Koza, who founded Spring Creek in 2012 after a decade working as a teacher, according to the school’s website, didn’t respond to a request for comment on the allegations against her.
But nearly a month after the attack, the suit says Education Department officials provided the girl with a seat at another public school, where she finished the eighth grade.
Goldberg said the girl missed nearly four weeks of class in total and is still struggling to recover. The matter is the subject of a 2016 federal civil rights complaint Goldberg filed in 2016 that’s still under review.
A spokesman for the city Law Department said the agency would review the suit.
