Mom To Sue City Over Bayside School's Handling Of Bullying Claims

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — A Queens mom says her 13-year-old daughter was repeatedly bullied and sexually harassed by fellow students at Bayside's Marie Curie Middle School for over a year and that administrators did nothing to stop it.

Katty Sterling is prepping a $10 million lawsuit against the NYC Department of Education that accuses the school's administrators of failing to protect her teenage daughter and hold the bullies accountable, according to her notice of claim filed Tuesday in Queens County Supreme Court.

"In what was now a well-established pattern, absolutely nothing was done by school administrators to stop the assailant from harassing [her]," the notice of claim says.

The bullying reached its crescendo this January, when the teen stopped attending school after she was attacked by another student in the school's cafeteria and a video of the incident was leaked to the New York Post.

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The teen filed multiple written reports with Marie Curie's administration, but when her mother went to the school in January to request copies, school administrators "were mysteriously unable to find any of those reports," Sterling said in an affidavit.

“Schools have a responsibility to investigate and address any allegation of harassment and bullying and support the students involved," Department of Education spokesperson Miranda Barbot said in an emailed statement to Patch.

"Earlier this school year, we revised school protocol for investigations, retrained staff, and added additional staff at Marie Curie. The superintendent continues to closely support the principal to ensure the school is a safe and supportive learning environment for all students.”

The teen started getting harassed in the fall of 2018, according to court records.

In November of that year, the teen told the school that a classmate had repeatedly touched her, groped her and made sexual gestures and comments to her. She reported him twice more in the spring of 2019, but administrators did nothing, she said in a June 8 affidavit.

The same boy was later accused of sexually harassing and demanding sex from another student, according to the court records, which cite a December 2019 article in the New York Post.

In March 2019, a different classmate attacked the teen in the school's gym and left her with bruises and scratches on her face, the teen said in her affidavit.

She reported the attack to her physical education teacher, assistant principal Robert LoCastro and principal Hank Schandel but the classmate continued to threaten her.

"I repeatedly told both Mr. LoCastro and Mr. Schandel about these threats," the teen said in the affidavit. "But the threats did not stop."

The teen reached her breaking point in January, when the classmate who'd threatened her attacked her in the school's cafeteria "while school staff just stood there and did basically nothing," she said in the affidavit.

Her attacker, a 14-year-old student, was arrested on a juvenile assault charge but continued to show up at school, according to the New York Post.

"There was just a pattern of complete and utter neglect," lawyer David Aminov, who is representing the family, told Patch on Wednesday. "A pattern of the school just ignoring these repeated instances of bullying by — not just one student — by multiple students."

To contact Patch reporter Maya Kaufman, email maya.kaufman@patch.com.