2009 springfield federal courthouse summertime.jpg

U.S. District Court in Springfield

( The Republican file photo)

SPRINGFIELD – Duggan Middle School officials repeatedly failed to protect a student from being sexually assaulted three times by a classmate with a long history of violence in school, a lawyer for the girl's mother argued Tuesday in U.S. District Court.

“Sexual assault isn’t only about sex; it’s about violence,” said Daniel T. Heffernan while opposing a motion by Springfield officials to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the mother in 2012.

The suit alleges that a male student who was suspended for sexually assaulting the girl in her class in May 2009 was allowed to return to her class the following year and rape her twice in January 2010.



Returning to Putnam after the latest sexual assaults, the girl spotted the male student in the hallway, bolted from the school and never returned, Heffernan said.

"Of course she was not going back again," the lawyer told Judge Mark G. Mastroianni.

A lawyer for the Springfield School Committee told Mastroianni that the case should be dismissed because Duggan officials took reasonable steps to protect the girl, and had no reason to believe that the male student would sexually assault her again.

“Based on what the city knew at the time, this (the May, 2009 incident) was an isolated incident between two students,” lawyers Anthony I. Wilson told the court.

Mastroianni, who questioned lawyers on both sides about elements of the case, is expected to rule on the city's motion to dismiss in the coming weeks.



Named as defendants in the lawsuit are the City of Springfield, the Springfield School Committee, former superintendent Alan Ingram, former Duggan principal Jonathan Swan and Mary Anne Morris, chief of pupil services.

The suit claims that a teacher saw the male student touching the girl’s chest and groin in May 2009 while sitting next to her in the bleachers during gym class; the male student was suspended and the girl’s mother was assured there would be no further interaction between the pair, according to the lawsuit.

But the male student ended up in the same class the following year, and twice pressured the girl into skipping class and having sex with him behind the piano in the school auditorium, the lawsuit states.

“It happened Tuesday and Thursday and now I am scared it might happen today,” the girl wrote in a Jan. 25, 2010, statement to school officials describing the incidents.

The girl’s teacher was later reprimanded for failing to supervise her students, and criminal charges were filed against the male student, according to the suit. The specific charges and outcome of the case is not known because juvenile court cases are not public.

Court documents show the male student accused of assaulting the girl was written up more than 80 discipline violations between 2004 and 2011, including bullying, fighting, tripping and stealing from other students and defying and threatening teachers and staff.



In arguing against dismissing the case Tuesday, Heffernan said Duggan officials never notified the class teacher in 2010 about the incident in the bleachers during the previous year, and the the 2010 teacher routinely ignored school policy requiring her to supervise students on their way to the gym or other destinations around the building.

The sexual assaults in the auditorium, Heffernan added, came after the two students had left their classroom and were supposed to be going to gym class.

“Everybody knew” the teacher was not escorting her students in the hallways, Heffernan said. “There was no care; there was no supervision.”

Referring to the teacher, Mastroianni asked: "Was it her policy to not follow the policy?"



None of the defendants were present for the hearing.

Ingram, now serving as the state’s deputy commissioner of education, resigned as superintendent in 2012; Swan left Duggan in 2010 to take an administrative post in the Hartford public school system.