A prominent New York sexual privacy lawyer is representing a Brooklyn girl who claims she was raped by a middle school classmate who video-recorded the incident in 2015.
Lawyer Carrie Goldberg has built her firm around cases like this one. She secured an almost $1-million settlement from the city on June 14 after school officials botched handling a report of rape in 2016 from a disabled girl who was a student in Brooklyn.
Now Goldberg is handling the lawsuit for the 17-year-old high school student who said she was raped when she was 13 and then told to “move on” by a school counselor, reported the New York Daily News. The suit asks for unspecified damages from the city and school employees for the anonymous girl, who went to school in a district where multiple similar incidents have been reported.
The girl said she waiting for her bus when she was dragged into an alley and raped in 2015. The alleged attack did not take place on the campus of Spring Creek Community School in Brooklyn, where the girl was in eighth grade. However, she said her alleged attacker also attended Spring Creek and circulated a video of the incident to Spring Creek students.
She told a school counselor about the incident a few days later, reported the New York Daily News. (RELATED: Head Pastor Who Admitted He Knowingly Hired Pastor Who Admitted To Sexual Assault Steps Down At Tennessee Church)
“If it happened, it happened — move on with your life,” the counselor told the girl, she said.
School officials got in touch with law enforcement, but the girl did not press charges. Then Spring Creek Principal Christina Koza met with the girl and her mother. Koza recommended the student take a leave of absence from the school as it got the situation “under control” since the girl’s being on campus would “make things worse,” according to the report.
Koza viewed the video of the incident and said it “looked consensual,” according to court papers. The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to Koza about Spring Creek’s sexual assault policies and received a response from New York City Department of Education spokesman Doug Cohen.
“Nothing is more important than the safety of all students and staff, and we have clear policies in place to ensure incidents are reported, investigated and appropriately addressed,” Cohen said. “These deeply troubling allegations are the subject of an investigation, and we will take appropriate follow up action based on the findings.”
The girl missed a month of school and then was moved to another public school, according to the suit. The girl claims in the suit that school officials’ management of the situation caused her to develop depression and suicidal thoughts, reported the New York Daily News.
Goldberg filed a federal civil rights complaint about the incident in 2016 that is still pending.
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