MA: IT’S PAYBACK
Suit says charter school called ACS as retaliation after assault
Charter school administrators made bogus child abuse accusations to retaliate against a Brooklyn mom who sued the school after her daughter was sexually assaulted, legal papers claim.
The mother, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid revealing her daughter's identity, first filed suit against Brooklyn Ascend Lower School in April 2017.
She sought unspecified damages from the school after officials there allegedly deleted video evidence of a school bus sex assault against her girl, who was a secondgrader at the time.
But just hours after the Daily News broke the story of the suit, school staffers called the city's Administration for Children's Services and reported signs of child abuse to take revenge on the suffering family, court papers charge.
And now the school may be on the hook for making that call.
Court documents filed with the pending case in June show a judge has permitted the mom to add an additional charge alleging that the school on Rockaway Parkway in Brownsville caused "intentional infliction of emotional distress" on the family in retaliation for the first filing.
The civil court judge also barred the school from filing any more ACS complaints against the girl's mother, according to the handwritten decision posted online last month.
The mom has since removed her 8-year-old daughter from the school and put her in therapy to help with the emotional trauma of the attack.
Because of the child abuse report, ACS investigators conducted a two-month probe that found no evidence of abuse, a source said.
Administrators who contacted ACS over the alleged abuse based the allegations on three factors including, "sexualized behaviors when she was in kindergarten," according to court documents.
The girl was in second grade at the time of the March 29, 2017, sexual assault on the privately operated and city-contracted Jofaz Transportation school bus.
Other signs charter school officials reported included allegations that the mom took her daughter out of school abruptly following the alleged sexual assault and refused the school's offer for psychological services for the child, according to court documents.
School officials wouldn't say why the report about the kindergarten allegations wasn't made sooner. But an Ascend spokesperson said administrators never possessed a video of the alleged bus assault.
The family's attorney, Shaun Gregory White, declined to comment on the amended complaint.
White's suit is not the first lawsuit filed against an Ascend charter school over an alleged sexual assault of a student.
In June 2014, the parents of a sixth-grader at Brooklyn Ascend Middle School on E. 98th St. sued administrators, alleging their daughter was sexually abused and assaulted by an eighth-grader, according to court documents.
Ascend Learning CEO Steven F. Wilson "vigorously" denied all the charges against both schools and declined to comment on the pending litigation.
“There is nothing Ascend takes more seriously than the safety and well-being of our students,” Wilson said. “Our educators, who are legally mandated reporters, acted responsibly when confronted with a series of troubling behaviors.”