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Mom Claims 3rd Grader Was Forced To Give Oral Sex To Three Classmates
By
Ben Yakas
Published May 31, 2013
Modified May 31, 2013
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By
Ben Yakas
Published May 31, 2013
Modified May 31, 2013
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A Harlem mom claims in a lawsuit that her 8-year-old son was forced to perform oral sex on three other elementary school kids in a public school bathroom last year. The mother, whose name is being withheld, tells the Daily News that last March Public School 194 principal Josephine Bazan said, “I don’t know how to explain this to you, but your son was in the bathroom and was forced to perform oral sex on three boys."
According to the lawsuit, the third grader had just finished lunch and was in a hallway waiting for class to start when a fifth-grader and two other third-graders pushed him into a bathroom stall as he pleaded for help. The victim claims one kid held his hands behind his back while the other forced him onto his knees. “When I was going on line three kids drag me to the bathroom and they pull down there (sic) pants,” the lawsuit says he wrote in a statement to the school. “I told them no but they didn’t listen to me.”
Cops arrested the two third-graders at the school on sexual misconduct charges. The fifth-grader was arrested on the same charges later at the precinct, the lawsuit says. But the mother of the victim is suing the DOE for $6 million because of “emotional and psychological anguish,” and for failing to alert parents and authorities that the fifth grader—who was considered the "ringleader"—had a history as a “sexual deviant.”
That student had been accused of touching a third-grade girl under her skirt during a reading class during the 2009/2010 school year, according to a separate lawsuit filed by the girl's mother. In that lawsuit, then principal Charyn Koppelson is accused of not punishing the student, and essentially covering up the incident: “She said, ‘He’s just a kid,’” the girl’s mom told the News. “(The incidents) were never placed in the system at all.”
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Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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