GRAND RAPIDS, MI – The parents of an emotionally impaired teen have filed a federal lawsuit alleging their 14-year-old daughter left Hope Academy without their permission, then wound up at a party where she was repeatedly raped.

The girl was not supposed to leave the school, at 240 Brown St. SE, without being signed out by one of her parents, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit was filed Monday, July 8, in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids.

The lawsuit named as defendants: Hope Academy of West Michigan, Ferris State University as the authorizing body for the charter school, school officials and Grand Rapids Police Department, which is accused of treating the case as that of a runaway.

Police Chief Kevin Belk, unaware of the lawsuit, referred questions to the Grand Rapids City Attorney’s Office. Messages seeking comment were left there and at Hope Academy.

The student was described as emotionally and educationally disabled, functioning at about a fourth-grade level. She has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She also has a low IQ, which led to occasional behavioral problems at other schools.

The girl became disruptive on Jan. 23, 2012. Her teacher called her mother, and said the girl had been acting out and was suspended from the classroom for the day. The teacher then told her mother that the girl had apparently left school grounds.

The mother said the girl was only to leave after being signed out by one of her parents. She said the teacher had no explanation for the girl leaving the school, according to the lawsuit.

An unknown school worker apparently told the girl she was suspended, and not to be on school property, prompting her to leave, the lawsuit said.

The girl began walking away in the “dangerous neighborhood” when a man said it was too cold to be outside without a coat and brought her inside his house, the lawsuit said.

“He gave her a beer then raped her,” attorney Joni Fixel wrote.

She was gang-raped at two other places, and locked in a room, the attorney wrote.

She took a key from a rapist after he fell asleep and she escaped, running down the street in a bed sheet. She hid in an abandoned building until a man brought her a blanket and coat, and called a YWCA street counselor, the lawsuit said.

Meanwhile, the parents were frantic, and contacted police.

Two days later, police called the parents and said their daughter had been found and taken to the YWCA. During the rape examination, a nurse discovered the girl had a 2-inch plastic bottle cap lodged in her cervix. It was removed at a local hospital.

By then, the girl was hysterical. Crying, and hitting herself in the head, she said: “I can hear him in my head. I can hear him in my head.”

She asked if an officer was still outside of her room because the rapists said they would kill her if she told anyone, the lawsuit said.

She was catatonic for three days, according to the suit.

On Jan. 30, 2012, Detective Marc Miller told the mother that her daughter’s story had problems. The mother said her daughter couldn’t remember sequences of events in the proper order because of her mental-health issues, and had just been brutalized, without her medication for three days, the lawsuit said.

Miller allegedly told the family that they would have to wait for DNA testing to be done. The girl would not make a good witness, and had mentioned other things, like a shooting, that didn’t occur.

“It appeared that it was a foregone conclusion that in the detective’s opinion this was a ‘bad girl’ or runaway, not a young girl who had been kicked out of school and raped by strangers,” Fixel wrote.

In the coming weeks, the girl revealed to a counselor what had happened during the two days she went missing. At the same time, her “mental health was spiraling out of control.”

She felt dirty, so she drank soap, and began cutting herself.

She was hospitalized for 4½ months, the lawsuit said.

E-mail John Agar: jagar@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ReporterJAgar