Two different parents filed two separate lawsuits against the Oswego school district. Both lawsuits, however, list the same complaint—“district officials failed to provide adequate supervision to prevent their children from being sexually abused in Kingsford Park Elementary School.”
The first lawsuit claims that another student at the school sexually abused their son while he was in third grade. The parents allege that school officials should have known that the child who sexually abused their son was “‘a risk, danger or hazard” to their son.
The lawsuit contends that the abuse began immediately after the abuser enrolled at the elementary school. When their son asked the teacher to go to the bathroom, the abuser allegedly followed him and committed the same acts to the son. The parents further allege that this happened several times during the week. As a result, the child decided to drink less often so that he could avoid having to go to the bathroom.
The son’s teacher at the time kept a journal about the abuser, according to an e-mail she wrote. The teacher further indicated that she wrote down instances when the abuser had problems. At times, the teacher tried to separate the abuser from the group. The mother of the abused son referenced this e-mail in the lawsuit.
A second lawsuit was filed by a parent whose child allegedly “was subjected to threats and abuse by the same ‘aggressor student’ as the victim in the first lawsuit.” The parent’s son indicated that the abuse took place while the school played a movie in class and while he and his other peers changed “into Halloween costumes in the school bathroom.” The lawsuit did not indicate specific information about the kind of sexual abuse the child endured.
