NYC Teacher Sued For Threatening To Out A Nine Year-Old Boy
A NYC charter school teacher is being sued by the parents of a 9 year-old boy, who say the teacher forced him to write a note to a female crush, falsely "confessing" that he is gay.
According to court papers filed this week, the teacher, Jared Alessandroni, 29, threatened to "out" a straight 9-year-old boy, James Pastrana, to his class at the South Bronx Charter School for International Cultures and the Arts, unless James told his crush he was gay. "I was so humiliated," said Pastrana, who reluctantly scribbled the false confession in a note to the girl. "It started to spread around the whole class and then everyone wanted to call me gay." A second lawsuit alleges that Alessandroni twisted an 8-year-old boy's arm in a school stairwell in 2008 because he didn't like the way the boy was walking. "The teacher's conduct was reprehensible," said Patrick Mullaney, the lawyer for both boys. Alessandroni, who left the school last year, said the allegations were probed by the Department of Education and no wrongdoing was found.Also named in the suit is the school's administrator, who is slated to plead guilty this week in separate case charging him with embezzling funds from a city non-profit.