Parents Say Older Students Are Violently Bullying Freshmen At Bronx High School
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A graphic video has surfaced of a ninth grader being attacked by nearly half a dozen older students.
As CBS2's Marc Liverman reported, some parents at the school say this isn't the first time.
The girl took punch after punch from every direction. It all happened so fast, she barely had time to react. It came at the hands of mostly eleventh and twelfth graders who pummeled the victim and threw her up against the front of a vehicle.
The whole thing happened barely a block away from school property with cars and buses speeding past.
Seretha Houston is the victim's mother.
"She could have easily been hit by a bus. She could have really been killed," she said.
Houston's daughter is a freshman at Theatre Arts Production Company High School in the Fordham section of the Bronx.What happened here has her so scared that she didn't even want to speak out on camera. She was bruised and her mother filed a police report.
"You're angry, then you're mad, then you want to retaliate, but you can't because there are kids and you can't do anything as a parent," Houston said.
That feeling of helplessness was echoed by Daphne Mays. In another incident her daughter Kyla Rose Clemons was pushed into a wall by an eleventh grader, inside the school earlier this month.
"Just the thought that someone could do that to my child. Not good, " she said.
Kyla Rose said she did everything she could to defend herself, and hit the junior back to get her to stop. That's when a security guard was able to intervene, and separate the two.
"She just punched me," she said.
Police confirmed the harassment violation, but said no one was arrested.
Mays said the harassment has been going on since the beginning of the school year, and she worries if something isn't done, it could get worse.
"It's been months and she has no help. I'm angry. I'm really angry," she said.
Kyla Rose said it's always juniors and seniors that are targeting freshman physically and verbally.
"They just yell at us and curse at us," she said.
And it's turned violent.
Last Wednesday, CBS2 reached out to the Department of Education, which would only issue a written statement.
"The school is providing a safe environment and there are clear systems to ensure reports of bullying are immediately reported, investigated, and addressed."
The department would not confirm that a bullying problem exists at the school.
In 2012, the principal at the same high school was removed after the education department found the staff had falsified student transcripts and given students credit for courses they hadn't taken.
