-Caveat Lector- http://www.nypostonline.com/news/17747.htm SAFE IN SCHOOL? By MARIA ALVAREZ Student-on-student sex attacks occur in city schools at all grade levels and in all boroughs - but the public rarely hears about them unless parents call police or sue, a Post investigation found. Last month, school officials notified police after a 16-year-old student at Bayside HS in Queens had been ambushed, tied up and sodomized by three 18-year-old male students. But we never heard about: *The Bronx kindergarten student who was attacked after he was allowed to go to the bathroom alone - despite a school safety plan mandating that kindergartners not be allowed to go to the bathroom unsupervised. *The 9-year-old student at PS 191 in Brooklyn who was dragged from his schoolyard into an adjacent building and sexually assaulted by four teens just minutes after the school day ended. When his family sued the Board of Education, city lawyers argued the school was not responsible for the boy's safety because the attack took place after class. The board settled, paying $400,000, after a teacher testified that school safety officers were supposed to patrol the schoolyard for 10 minutes after dismissal. *The 12-year-old Staten Island special-ed student raped by another student - after a school officer had spotted the two half-naked in a stairwell and done nothing. "He just left these two in a sexually compromising position," said lawyer Edward Chase. The girl, who had overcome severe mental illness, is now back in a mental institution - with $350,000 in settlement money from the Board of Ed paying for her care, said Chase. *The 9-year-old girl who was sexually abused by two boys on her school bus - even though school and bus officials had been warned by her mother that the boys had been menacing her daughter for months. *The 10th-grade female student at Lafayette HS in Brooklyn who was grabbed by three male students in the middle of the school day and dragged to an isolated area in the basement, where she was raped. "These cases are terrible - there seems to be a constant flow of them," said lawyer Nathan Belofsky, who is representing the 10th-grade rape victim. "The Board of Ed should do something. One case is too much - you are talking about lifetime scars. It's irresponsible," he said. Henry Branche, the board's former school safety chief, agrees. He said students are being sexually attacked in city schools because security officers are not guarding stairwells and corridors. "Some principals do a good job implementing safety plans, and others put it on paper but don't implement them," he said. His advice: "Parents should tell their kids not to walk in hallways alone or even go to the bathroom alone." Schools not only set the stage for attacks, they often compound the damage by providing little support for the young victims and virtually no punishment or counseling for their assailants, scores of parents and lawyers of sex-crime victims told The Post. In the case of Luis (not his real name), a 5-year-old kindergartner who was sodomized in a boys' bathroom at PS 171 in Astoria, Queens, a 10-year-old charged with the attack was suspended from school for only one week. Many young school sex-crime victims also fail to get justice outside school - few see their attackers hauled into Family Court, said the parents and lawyers. In some cases, it can't be helped - the young victims are too traumatized to be good witnesses. But several negligence lawyers claimed that even when victims would make viable witnesses, city lawyers often don't aggressively pursue their cases - out of fear that the evidence they develop will later be used in megabuck civil suits against the Board of Ed. Lawyer Jonny Kool, who represents little Luis, said he suspects that was the reason the criminal case against one of the 5-year-old's assailants went nowhere. He said Luis' family backed off when city lawyers, who had repeatedly interviewed the youngster, wanted him to give a deposition without assurances it would be used to prosecute his attackers. "We didn't want to subject this little kid to this torment. He was undergoing psychiatric counseling and the Corporation Counsel didn't take this into account. There was no willingness to accommodate the victim," Kool said. Corporation Counsel lawyer Peter Reinhartz, who works in Family Court, called Kool's assessment "absolute nonsense." He said the city's Corporation Counsel division has a separate office for criminal cases involving children. "We don't discuss the cases," said Reinhartz. "We are held at the same prosecutorial standard [as in adult criminal cases]. It's insulting and ludicrous. If an arrest is made, we will prosecute." A court source told The Post an arrest was made in Luis' case, but city lawyers "declined to prosecute." The Board of Ed also hasn't developed a systemwide program to provide counseling and other help to both sex-crime victims and offenders, said psychologist Eileen Treacy, who interviews student attack victims for the city's district attorneys. "Sexual assaults committed by children are either handled with sensitivity - with both the perpetrator and the victim getting counseling and services - or they are dismissed by school officials," said Treacy. "There are some schools that tell parents and the child straight up that they're liars and nothing can be done," she said. "And forget about the smaller kids - the 5-year-olds," she said. "It's a real complicated issue and very often people just shake their heads because it's so overwhelming." Board of Ed spokeswoman Pam McDonnell acknowledged there is no systemwide program for victims or sex offenders. While stressing that the board "takes every allegation of sexual misconduct very seriously," she added that "depending on the specific circumstances of each incident, the action taken may vary and could include investigation by the principal, superintendent, police, special commissioner and Board of Education special investigators. "Appropriate intervention and counseling services are made available [to both the victim and perpetrator] as well." School sex crimes come at a hefty cost - both to the victims, who suffer lifelong repercussions, and to taxpayers, who have to foot the bill for multimillion-dollar suits. Last year, the Board of Ed paid out almost $3 million to settle sex-attack suits. So far this year, almost $2 million has been paid out. Treacy said there's a growing number of school sex-abuse cases both "because there is more reporting" and because "a lot of kids are acting out and coping with their own sexual abuse - turning from victim to victor." New York Post®, nypostonline.com™, nypost.com™ and newyorkpost.com™ are registered trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc. Copyright 1999 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved. -- ----------------------- NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only. 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