The father of the boy in the picture said in an email: “We are not the victims here, and no one should feel sorry for us. But it is undeniable that the impact of this entire event affected all of the kids and families involved and the community as a whole. I don’t think anyone emerged unscathed.”

Albert J. Rescinio, a lawyer for the boy who sent the photo, said “a tongue-in-cheek sarcastic joke” made when his client was 16 did not justify “attempting to ruin or derail the life of a young man.”

Paige and her family bristle at the idea that they should feel bad for the boys. She is now a freshman at a large out-of-state college, which is not what she had hoped for, and is still having trouble trusting people. “I don’t think it was a joke at all,” she said. “If it was a joke, they would have come up to me and said sorry.”

The lawsuit that Paige and her parents filed Wednesday is against the school and district — not the two boys — for not stopping the bullying and anti-Semitism.

“Mr. Moore does not have the excuse that he was too young to know better,” their lawyer, Eric Hecker, said.

If administrators had better protected Paige’s identity, she said, if they had intervened earlier and supported her, perhaps she could have stayed at the school.

“It is a public school,” she said, “and they should have been able to handle it.”