Green light for ‘nudie’ against B’klyn yeshiva
A former student who sued a Brooklyn yeshiva for expelling her over an allegation that she texted a nude selfie to another student has won a legal victory in court.
A defamation suit, first filed by the student’s parents on her behalf in Brooklyn Federal Court in 2015, accused the principal and executive director of Lev Bais Yaakov High School of failing to properly investigate the allegation against then-student Goldy Schiller and ruining the girl’s reputation in the tight-knit Orthodox Jewish community.
Lawyers for Lev Bais Yaakov and school administrators sought to have the case dismissed on a summary judgment last year, but on Jan. 2, a judge decided it should proceed.
Schiller’s lawyer Robert Tolchin said the case should go to trial to give his client, who is now 20, an opportunity to vindicate herself.
“She was put through a horrible ordeal when she was quite young,” Tolchin said.
“She’s still recovering from it. People still know her as the girl who was thrown out.”
Tolchin said Schiller was a struggling 15-year-old student at Lev Bais Yaakov and her family was involved in a dialogue with administrators when she was expelled in 2013.
According to court papers, school officials received an anonymous call from a woman who reported Schiller appeared nude in a photo on her son’s phone.
The woman said her son attended Lev Bais Yaakov, but she would not identify him or provide the image.
Lev Bais Yaakov officials used the allegation as justification to push the student out of school, Tolchin said.
After Schiller was expelled, the mothers of students in her class were sent an email from the school alerting them to the teen having a “very serious” problem with her “reputation,” according to the suit.
Tolchin said Schiller never sent a naked picture of herself to anyone and that the entire story is false.
Through her lawyer, Schiller declined to speak to the Daily News, citing privacy concerns.
Reps for Lev Bais Yaakov did not immediately respond to a request for comment.