7-yr.-old hurt in Harlem shocker
A celebrated Harlem charter school principal was arrested Thursday for assaulting a 7year-old student with autism, police said.
Jason Epting, 43, the principal of Harlem Hebrew Language Academy, left the boy gushing blood from his forehead and concussed during a January encounter Epting first tried to brush off as an accident, the boy’s horrified mother told the Daily News.
School officials later discovered a video of the disturbing incident and turned it over to police, who arrested Epting Thursday on charges including felony assault and acting in a manner injurious to a child. He was awaiting arraignment at Manhattan Criminal Court Thursday night.
Patricia Laforey, the boy’s mom, still hasn’t seen the video.
“I want the truth to be told,” she told The News. “It’s not right what happened. It has to stop happening to kids. These are kids who are taken advantage of.”
The morning of Jan. 24, Laforey got the kind of call every parent dreads.
An employee from the Harlem charter school, where the boy is in second grade, asked Laforey to video chat. The staffer warned her to sit down.
When Laforey looked at her phone’s screen, she saw her son in hysterics, his white shirt drenched in blood from a cut on his forehead.
Epting got on the call, and tried to explain that her son, who has a special education plan and is assigned a full-time paraprofessional, ran into a door, Laforey said.
But the boy’s cries gave a different message.
“Jason did this to me,” Laforey recalled her son wailing.
Laforey rushed to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, where doctors gave her son three layers of stitches to close the deep gash in his forehead. They later told Laforey her son also had a concussion.
In a phone call later that day, Laforey said, Epting shifted his story by stating he accidentally hit the boy with the door as he opened it.
But the Harlem mother had her suspicions.
“I could tell it wasn’t what they said,” Laforey said. “Jason kept changing his story. That’s a huge red flag right there.”
She pressed the issue with Jonathan Werle, the Chief Operating Officer of Hebrew Public, the network that oversees several city charter schools —including Harlem Hebrew — that offer Hebrew-English education.
Werle told Laforey the next week he’d found a video of the incident, and turned it over to the NYPD. A police officer contacted the mom a day later to say they’d opened an investigation. But neither school officials nor police have revealed what exactly happened in the video, Laforey said.
In the meantime, she’s tried to help her son cope with his lingering trauma.
“Every night since he has had nightmares,” she said. “He’ll wake up screaming, or wake me up to make sure I have to know I’m close to him.”
Epting was freed without bail at arraignment Thursday night in Manhattan Criminal Court. “It was a sad accident,” his lawyer, Martin Druyan, told The News.
“It’s sad for the child — we’re sorry,” Druyan said. He added that the incident was also sad for Epting “because an accident has turned into a criminal prosecution. It’s an accident ... The door may have been defective in some manner.”
Druyan argued that an order of protection meant to keep Epting away from the hurt child will prevent Epting from returning to work. A judge issued the order anyway.
Laforey has retained a lawyer and plans to file a civil lawsuit. “The family wants to see that this horrible act be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” said Scott Rynecki, the family’s lawyer.
Epting was the principal of the high-performing Harlem
Village Academy for six years, according to his LinkedIn page. He was also featured in “Teached,” a documentary about school reform.
He’s currently listed as cohead of school at Harlem Hebrew Academy this year, according to the school’s website.
Epting has been on administrative leave since the incident, according to a note that school officials sent parents Thursday evening and reviewed by The News.
“We have learned from the authorities that charges were filed today against one of our Co-Heads of School, Jason Epting,” said Jon Rosenberg, the head of Hebrew Public. “The Board will take this new development under advisement during closed executive session on March 11, 2020, the date of its next scheduled meeting.”