LIC Teen Sues DOE Over Years Of Anti-Gay Bullying, Harassment

LONG ISLAND CITY, QUEENS — For two years, Jason Cianciotto watched his pre-teen son get bullied daily for being gay while attending middle school in Long Island City.

“It was devastating to watch my son suffer,” Cianciotto said in a news statement, adding that the anti-gay harassment that his son faced at I.S. 126Q Albert Shanker School for Visual and Performing Arts is “not just wrong, it’s against the law.”

That’s why, on Monday, after repeatedly reporting the bullying, Cianciotto filed a lawsuit on behalf of his son, identified as D.S., against the New York City Department of Education (DOE) and I.S. 126Q administrators — who knew about the harassment, and at times blamed D.S. for bringing the bullying on himself, according to the lawsuit.

“This is not a case where the school lacked knowledge of what was happening,” said
Alanna Kaufman, one of D.S.’ attorneys, alluding to the paper trail of bullying incidents that Cianciotto reported to administrators and teachers from I.S. 126Q, as well as DOE employees — all of which are mentioned in the nearly 50-page lawsuit.

According to the suit, the middle school and DOE violated state and local anti-discrimination laws, and caused D.S.’ mental health to degrade to the point of severe anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation.

Cianciotto said that the school and city agency both “repeatedly failed” to “keep my son safe.”

When Patch reached out to the DOE for comment on the lawsuit, a spokesperson wrote that "the safety of our students is our number one priority and we will review the complaint and immediately investigate the claims.”

The spokesperson described the claims of the lawsuit as "deeply troubling" adding "there is absolutely zero tolerance for bullying or harassment of any kind in our schools. Every student deserves to feel safe, welcomed, and affirmed in their school and we have invested in trainings and support to reform classroom culture, with a focus on inclusive policies and effective strategies to prevent bullying," they wrote.

Patch also reached out to I.S. 126Q, but the middle school did not respond by the time of publication.

A challenging childhood

D.S. faced challenges during his childhood well before the bullying at school began.

He experienced physical and emotional abuse that eventually led to his placement in foster care, where he bounced from one home to another, all while battling brain cancer, according to the lawsuit.

In 2017, Cianciotto and his husband Courter Simmons began fostering D.S., and the couple formally adopted him the following year.

Shortly after his parents enrolled him in sixth grade at I.S. 126Q, D.S. came out as gay — at which point the bullying began.

The bullying begins

As a sixth grader, D.S. was called homophobic slurs, including “faggot” and “homo,” and bullied for having two dads, according to the lawsuit.

In one instance cited in the suit, another student told D.S. that his dads were “shit” and a “mistake created by Jesus” because they are gay. His science teacher, who witnessed the exchange, did not report the incident to school administrators or the DOE.

That same year D.S.’ parents met with a school dean about the bullying, and she said that it was “inappropriate” for D.S. to talk about his sexual orientation at school, and that if he talked less about being gay he wouldn’t be bullied as much, according to the lawsuit.

The suit indicates that D.S. continued to face verbal and physical bullying at school that year, and began expressing suicidal ideation in class — though the bullying and its impacts only intensified the following year.

Bullying intensifies

Throughout seventh grade D.S. was constantly called slurs and was physically bullied multiple times.

In one two-week span mentioned in the suit, D.S. was called a “b***h,” a “faggot,” a “faggot a**,” and a “p***y d**k sucking face” a total of six times.

In most of the instances named in the suit, the school substantiated that the instances happened and investigated them, but ultimately determined that no bias-based harassment occurred.

Throughout this time D.S. began to feel so much anxiety that he went to counselling four times per week and developed insomnia, according to an email from the suit that Cianciotto sent to the school’s counselor, assistant principal, and a dean.

For Cianciotto, the tipping point was a day when students began passing D.S. homophobic notes during class. One called him a “gay b***h” and another stated that he was “going to hell,” according to the lawsuit.

At that point D.S.’ parents worked with a senior DOE employee to get their son an emergency transfer out of I.S. 126Q “to protect [his] safety,” the lawsuit says. He was able to transfer to another school later that week.

Ongoing lawsuit

Already an administrative judge has found that the DOE’s response to D.S.’ bullying amounted to “callous disregard,” in a ruling that the DOE did not contest.

But, that win did not grant D.S. financial damages for the emotional distress that he suffered during his years of bullying, which in turn impacted his ability to learn. This lawsuit aims to account for that impact.

“No student should ever have to suffer what D.S. endured,” said Kaufman.