ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, November 3, 1996 TAG: 9611040086
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: STAMFORD, N.Y.
SOURCE: HOLLY CORYELL THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
SNAPPING BRAS and name-calling were sexual harassment, Eve Bruneau says, and the school should have done something about it.
Ninth-grader Eve Bruneau is now in a new school, earning high marks, serving as captain of her junior varsity soccer team and playing flute and saxophone in the band.
Three years ago, at South Kortright Central School, she was depressed, cried frequently and begged her mother to let her stay home. She didn't feel safe. Previously a straight-A student, she had falling grades.
The reason she was forced to change schools, according to her lawsuit against South Kortright, was sexual harassment.
The federal lawsuit, which goes to trial Monday in Binghamton, claims that boys in Eve's sixth-grade class called her and other girls names such as ``dog-faced bitch,'' prostitute and lesbian.
The boys also snapped the girls' bras, stuffed paper down their blouses and rubbed their hands up and down girls' backs, according to Eve's attorneys. One boy grabbed a girl's breasts, while another cut a girl's hair, they said.
``I started to think maybe I am ugly and maybe I am a bitch,'' Eve said in a recent interview in the Scoharie County farmhouse where she and her younger sister were born. ``By the time I left, I was just, like, a wreck. I had really bad posture. I was depressed all the time.''
Eve's case - one of a growing number of sexual harassment lawsuits involving schoolchildren - could be the first federal peer harassment lawsuit to go to trial seeking punitive damages, said Merrick Rossein, Eve's attorney and a City University of New York law professor.
A case tried under California law ended this fall with a girl awarded $500,000 in damages. Eve's lawsuit does not specify a dollar amount.
``There is a difference between flirting and hurting,'' said Brooks Burdette of New York City, who also is representing Eve. ``What happened in our case was systematic. It was a lot more than childhood horseplay.''
Eve claims her former school district 60 miles southwest of Albany failed to protect her from sexual harassment, violating Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 prohibiting sex discrimination in schools.
``The fact that it hurt the girls a lot and silenced them and prevented them from participating in the academic program wasn't recognized by the school,'' Rossein said.
School officials have said they tried to correct any problems in Eve's sixth-grade class. The district argues that at any rate, the law does not apply to sexual harassment among children. The district's attorneys refused to comment further before the trial.
Some local residents back the school system. Shyamal Sen Gupta gathered 290 signatures on a petition to have the case dismissed. He said even his own daughter has been taunted at school, but that doesn't constitute sexual harassment.
``An 11-or 12-year-old child cannot deliberately and/or intentionally commit acts of sexual harassment,'' the petition said. ``We taxpayers believe that it is WE who are really getting harassed.''
Eve transferred to another district in March 1994 after the South Kortright board refused to move her to another sixth-grade class. Now 15, she attends a private boarding school in Massachusetts.
``I'm not going to give them the satisfaction, you know, that they can get away with this,'' she said.
Her mother, Pat Schofield, said Eve has found strength from talking about her experience. She has appeared on several television shows and received dozens of calls from girls and parents with similar problems around the country.
``It's been part of the healing process for her, definitely, to have your voice heard and also to know that you're helping other people,'' Schofield said.
A 1993 survey of more than 1,600 public school students in grades eight through 11 found that 85 percent of girls and 76 percent of boys had experienced some sort of sexual harassment, according to the American Association of University Women Educational Foundation, which funds research on girls and education.
What's new is that children and parents are going to court.
LENGTH: Medium: 83 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. file/1996. Ninth-grader Eve Bruneau discusses aby CNBsexual harassment lawsuit at her home in Stamford, N.Y., recently.
The trial begins Monday.