EDUCATION
Suits Against City Fly in Wake of Cedeno Conviction
Three cases seek anti-bullying enforcement; DOE report minimizes school’s disorder
BY ANDY HUMM
Now that gay teen Abel
Cedeno has been sentenced
to 14 years in
prison for manslaughter
and assault for using a knife in
a 2017 Bronx classroom fi ght that
left Matthew McCree dead and injured
Ariane Laboy, three lawsuits
are heating up against the city to
determine the schools’ liability for
the harm to McCree and Laboy as
well as to Cedeno himself.
Louna Dennis, McCree’ mother,
is suing the City’s Department
of Education (DOE), the NYPD,
and Cedeno for her son’s “wrongful
death.” Her attorney, Sanford
Rubenstein, said he is basing the
suit on the lack of metal detectors
at the Urban Assembly for Wildlife
Conservation High School that he
says had been requested by the
principal, the failure of an assistant
principal to act properly on
an alleged warning by Cedeno’s
mother, Luz Hernandez, in 2014
that her son had brought a knife
to school, and the school’s failure
to deal with the bullying of Cedeno
under the Dignity for All Students
Act (DASA), which requires reporting
of such incidents.
Ariane Laboy, represented by attorney
Matthew Blit, is suing on
similar grounds.
“All three of these kids — Ariane,
Matthew, and Abel — and their
families were failed,” he said. “The
DOE failed miserably in protecting
our children despite a clear warning
from Mr. Cedeno’s own mother.
The DOE took no action to prevent
it, failed to train the teachers in
the classroom on how to prevent it
or diffuse a simple argument that
snowballed.”
And despite the fact that he is
now a convicted felon, Cedeno is
pursuing a federal lawsuit just
amended by his attorney, Tom
Shanahan, and joined by Mustafa
Sullivan of FIERCE, which serves
LGBTQ youth, primarily those of
color, on behalf of “all similarly
situated” youth in Bronx schools
against Chancellor Richard Carranza,
the former principal of the
Abel Cedeno, with his sister, at the Bronx Hall of Justice during his recent manslaughter trial.
now-shuttered high school, and
the principals of Cedeno’s intermediate
and middle schools where,
the suit says, “Abel was subjected
to egregious bullying by peers
based upon his sex, gender, actual
or perceived gender, gender
non-conformity and/ or actual or
perceived sexual orientation. Almost
all D.O.E. employee including
hall monitors, teachers, guidance
counselors, school and district administrators
did nothing.”
Sullivan wrote that FIERCE
members prepared to testify include
Rakeish Doolam, now 22,
who was bullied in the Bronx from
the elementary grades through
high school. In sixth grade “school
staff told that him that he would
get over it in high school,” Sullivan
wrote. But the bullying did not
abate and Doolam contemplated
taking his own life and attended
school less and less. His family
sent him to Jamaica where he
faced familial homophobia. When
he returned to New York, his family
disowned him and he entered
housing provided by the Ali Forney
Center, which serves LGBTQ
homeless youth.
Also set to testify is Desmond is
Amazing, 12, a drag performer and
advocate working to end bullying
and whose own experience in the
schools has been mixed, though
he enjoys parental support.
On September 12, the special
commissioner of investigation for
the city’s public schools issued a
report that led with the conclusion
that Wildlife’s assistant principal
ANDY HUMM
for discipline, Caridad Caro — identifi
ed in the suit Rubenstein fi led —
“failed to properly act on a report”
to the school by Cedeno’s mother
in 2014 that he “had threatened
family members with a knife, and
had brought the knife to school in
his backpack.” Caro testifi ed that
she searched Cedeno’s backpack
and did not fi nd a knife and did not
feel the need to report the matter
further. The commissioner’s report
says, “Weapons searches of students
are not to be conducted by
DOE staffers,” but by NYPD School
Safety Agents. The special commissioner
recommended that Caro
be fi red and not employed by the
DOE in the future.
Rubenstein and Blit have seized
on this irregularity in the 2014
knife incident in their suits. Cedeno’s
defense attorney, Christopher
R. Lynn, said the weapon described
was “a butter knife” and that Cedeno
never brought it to school.
The attorneys in all three lawsuits
— and the judge in the criminal
trial, Michael A. Gross — seem
to agree that Cedeno did suffer
from serious bullying, so much
so that he had extended absences
from school and had to repeat the
12th grade.
According to the special commissioner’s
report, however, all of
the teachers and administrators
Cedeno said he told about being
bullied — but did nothing about it
— stated that the gay youth never
told them he was being bullied.
The report identifi es a Mr. Keating,
who told investigators he met
with Cedeno — sometimes with his
mother — about “absenteeism, behavioral
issues, and poor academic
performance” but that “the student
never said that he was bullied at
Wildlife.”
Cedeno has said that many of
these same school personnel witnessed
him being called a “faggot”
and worse and took no action
whatsoever other than to tell the
class to “settle down.”
A report that Friends of the Island
Academy, a Rikers-associated
youth re-entry program where
Cedeno was getting help while out
on bail, submitted to Judge Gross
prior to sentencing, stated that,
according to Cedeno, Keating “told
Abel to ‘be strong,’ however Abel
noted that Mr. Keating did not
know how to address the bullying
in an effective way. Students began
targeting Mr. Keating and Abel,
spreading rumors that Abel was
dating Mr. Keating and detailing
made-up stories of sexual contact
between Abel and his teacher…
Abel noted that even the ‘teachers
at the school were afraid of other
bullies.’”
Guidance counselor Shavon Evelyn,
who the Shanahan suit alleges
failed to fi le a DASA bullying
report, also told investigators that
Cedeno “never complained about
bullying.” Lynn said that when
Evelyn was questioned in pre-trial
deposition, she acknowledged that
she never fi led a report on any bullying
incident in the school and
said it was up to the school’s dean
of students.
Throughout the city’s public
school system there is a paucity of
offi cial incident reports on bullying
— mostly because school administrators
think it stigmatizes them.
But anonymous student surveys
conducted by the DOE indicate
that the problem is “signifi cant.”
An audit by State Comptroller Tom
DiNapoli found that bullying is
chronically underreported, with
a third of schools reporting zero
“material incidents” of bullying to
the State Education Department.
➤ CEDENO LAWSUITS, continued on p.13
September 26 - October 9 12 , 2019 | GayCityNews.com
/GayCityNews.com