Lawsuit Filed Against Archdiocese for Child Sex Abuse

Suit claims the school failed to prevent abuse from fellow student

 The Archdiocese of Miami and a Coconut Grove Catholic School were sued for $5 million after a 6-year-old boy alleged that he was repeatedly sexually abused by another boy at St. Hugh Catholic School.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday and claims that the first grader was consistently escorted to the bathroom by a fellow student, who is 7, where he was abused. The suit claims that failure to supervise visits to the bathroom led to the victim’s sexual abuse that allegedly happened throughout the fall of 2011.

The lawsuit claims that when the boy had to go to the bathroom the boy would be assigned as his bathroom buddy. Each time, the older child would threaten to beat him up if he told anyone.

Attorney Jeff Herman said the school’s bathroom policy is unsafe. Adults are not monitoring outside the bathroom, and it took an inordinate amount of time to go to the bathroom and no one questioned that, he said.

When the boy told his mother in December, she told school administrators, but the school did not remove the perpetrator from class, Herman said. So, she took her son out of the school. The alleged abuser was still escorting other boys to bathroom, according to Herman.

"My son feels ashamed, embarrassed, sad and disappointed. I have nightmares of this everyday. I am in fear of leaving my son in school or in activities alone. I ask myself why does my son have to go through this at age 6. I don’t have words to describe the pain my child and I are going through,” the mother said in a statement.

Herman said sexual abuse by children does occur.

“Unfortunately, we do know it’s a possibility. It does happen,” he said. “Young kids do assault other kids.”

The archdiocese said the school is cooperating with the Department of Children and Families.

“When the school was made aware of the allegations, the school reached out to the children involved and the parents were offered counseling,” archdiocese spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta said.

Herman said he was worried about the alleged perpetrator.

“This is sometimes a learned behavior. I don’t know anything about this boy's history at all but it concerns me and I hope people, experts are looking into this to make sure this boy is safe,” he said.

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