NY’s ‘3 BILLBOARDS’

Film inspires woman’s stand vs. ‘rapist’ teacher

A Harlem woman took a page out of the script of Oscar-winning “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” — by putting up her own 50-foot highway signs blasting the teacher she says raped her two decades ago.

“I was on a plane and watched ‘Three Billboards’ and got the idea,” Kat Sullivan said, referring to the drama about a mom who puts up signs challenging authorities to solve her daughter’s murder.

Sullivan, 38, was an 18-year-old student at Emma Willard School — an all-girls boarding school in Troy — when she says she was blindfolded, ball-gagged and raped in 1998 by history teacher and soccer coach Scott Sargent.

She settled with the school for an undisclosed sum — $14,000 of which she used to put up three billboards that will run for 28 days.

The digital billboards are located on I-787 in Albany near Emma Willard, I-95 in Fairfield, Conn., where Sargent lived and taught at the Kings School after Emma Willard, and I-90 in Springfield, Mass., near where he currently resides.

“He can still teach and coach, and he was hired by another school,” said Sullivan, a nurse. “My life was completely ruined.”

Sullivan said Sargent began “grooming” her after he found out her mom had brain cancer.

“I thought he was being my friend,” she recalled. “He started messaging me on AOL, saying, ‘You look really pretty today’ . . . It went from, ‘Hey, I really like you,’ to very controlling very quickly, like, ‘Where were you?’ ”

Years after the attack she mustered up the courage to come forward but learned the statute of limitations had run out. In New York state, sex-abuse victims have until age 23 to press charges.

“I can’t take him to court, but I can do this,” Sullivan said of the billboards, one of which reads, “My rapist is protected by New York state law. I AM NOT.”

Another urges New York lawmakers to pass the long-stalled Child Victims Act, which would extend the statute of limitations to age 28 in criminal cases and age 50 in civil cases.

Sargent couldn’t be reached for comment.