Parents of 13-Year-Old Sue Boston Area School District for Anti-Semitic Bullying
The parents of a 13-year-old boy are suing their Massachusetts school district for ignoring verbal and physical attacks on their son by other students for being Jewish.
Jennyfer Sordillo and Robert Groezinger filed the lawsuit late last month against the Carver public schools in U.S. District Court in Boston. It was first reported in the Boston Globe over the weekend.
They claim their son was subjected to daily anti-Semitic attacks by a group of boys at his school. The abuse included religious slurs and Nazi salutes, having pennies thrown at him, and being punched and kicked.
Most recently, the abusers drew a swastika in chalk outside the family home, the Boston Globe reported.
The lawsuit claims the abuse has been occurring for two years and school officials “have done nothing to stop it,” according to the newspaper.
An attorney for the school district, which is approximately 50 miles from Boston, told the newspaper it would respond to the charges in court.
According to the lawsuit, which was brought under the Massachusetts Anti-Bullying Law, the boy was called names such as “stingy Jew,” “dirty Jew,” and “Jew boy” and was told after being saluted with the Hitler salute that he needed to “get in the oven.”
The parents, according to reports, complained repeatedly about the school bullying.
There is only one other Jewish student in the class of 155, according to the lawsuit.
Why I became the Forward’s editor-in-chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
— Alyssa Katz, editor-in-chief
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
