A Texas man has accused a school superintendent of bullying him decades earlier while in junior high, claiming the torment prompted him to nearly commit suicide.

Greg Barrett, whose legal name is Greg Gay, said his original surname was one of the primary reasons he was bullied while at West Memorial Junior High in Katy, where Barrett claims the district’s current superintendent, Lance Hindt, was among a group of students who physically attacked him in seventh grade, according to dramatic footage from a public school board meeting Monday.

“I was bullied, unbelievably bullied,” said Barrett, who graduated from Katy Independent School District in 1983. “I started out and I had teachers that bullied me, I had kids that bullied me, even the coaches — I had nobody to turn to.”

During one incident that occurred during lunch, Barrett said, a group of students shoved his head into a urinal, causing his lip to bleed.

“I had laid on the ground in the fetal position as the kids kicked me,” an emotional Barrett recalled. “I got up, I rinsed my face off, I walked out of the lunchroom, walked straight to the principal’s office and he told me, ‘These kids will grow up someday. They won’t always be like this.’”

Barrett, who was soaked in urine from lying beneath the urinal, said school officials sent him home later that day.

“Well I went home and I got the .45 out of my father’s drawer and put it in my mouth,” Barrett said. “Because at this point, I had nobody, nobody in the school system to help me. Is that the way this is going to be?”

Barrett then accused Hindt of being the student who shoved his head into the urinal, before throwing his hands up in disgust and walking away from the podium.

Hindt can be heard on the video laughing off Barrett’s comments as he walks away, KHOU reports. In a statement to the station, Hindt acknowledged attending West Memorial Junior High with Barrett in 1978 but denied the bullying accusations.

“It was difficult for me to listen to a gentleman Monday night recount a bullying incident he said occurred more than 35 years ago,” Hindt said in a statement. “As superintendent in three school districts in Texas, I have always tried to create an environment where every student is safe — physically and emotionally. But when an individual impugns my character and reputation as the instigator of those actions, I am disappointed because it simply is not true. I do not recall this person from my childhood.”

Hindt said the principal of West Memorial at the time “would never had let me (or anyone else)” get away with the actions described by Barrett.

“I do not suggest that Mr. Barrett was not bullied, only that I was not part of it,” Hindt’s statement continued. “Bullying is wrong. Period. It was then and it is today. At Katy ISD, we are always looking for ways to make our campuses and our students safe.”

Barrett, meanwhile, said he was disappointed that Hindt missed an opportunity to fix something that has plagued him for decades.

“This was a chance for him to stand up as a man and admit this was wrong,” Barrett told KHOU. “We were kids. We did stupid stuff. We made mistakes, but now he’s in charge of a huge school district.”

Barrett said he came forward with his experience because bullying is still an issue in the district — and can have long-lasting consequences for students.

“It’s a scar,” he said. “It’s something that never goes away. It’ll never go away until I die.”