Two Bronx teenagers, ages 13 and 14, have been charged with raping and sodomizing two sixth-grade girls in the school auditorium.
Now the girls, who were assaulted at the Urban Science Academy on Oct. 16, may have to come face-to-face with their attackers, according to the NY Daily News.
On Monday morning, the girls may have to sit across the table from their attackers at a Bronx Department of Education office as they recount their ordeal during a suspension hearing for the two boys, according to attorney Alan Ripka, who is suing the city on the accusers’ behalf.
The girls are terrified about seeing the alleged attackers again, but school officials said if they didn’t testify, the alleged rapists won’t be suspended, Ripka said.
“(The girls) don’t want to be in front of these people,” he said. “Anybody with half a brain wouldn’t want to be. To traumatize these two young girls again by sitting them down at the same table as their accused rapists will be psychologically traumatizing, and the Department of Education should not be demanding they be present for the hearing.”
If the alleged attackers do not show up on Monday, they will most likely be suspended. Officials are trying to determine if there is a way for the girls to testify without seeing their attackers. That way, officials say, the girls won’t be intimidated to tell their story.
That story, according to sources close to the investigation, is horrifying.
The teen terrors brought the girls to the back of the auditorium, to an isolated platform used for filming the stage, sources said. The boys then took off the girls’ clothes and took turns raping and sodomizing them, beginning at 12:17 p.m., according to court papers. “Let’s switch bodies,” one of the boys told the other in the midst of the sex crime, court papers allege. The girls reported the attacks to their parents, who brought them to a local hospital where rape kits were administered. Cops were called in around 4:30p.m.
The next day, the older teen was charged with rape in the first degree, police sources said. The younger suspect was tracked down and arrested on Oct. 20, charged with rape in the third degree and committing a criminal sex act. Both teens are being charged as juveniles. The older boy was ordered held on $1,000 bail.
When the girls went missing for at least two class periods, no one at the school went looking for them, Ripka said. Administration assumed the girls were skipping class.
In the wake of the attack, parents and education officials are expressing concern over the safety of their children.
“I am deeply disturbed and saddened by these alleged events,” city Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña said in a statement. “As a mother and grandmother, I treat every student as my own, and every school must be a safe haven.”
Both teenagers have been charged as juveniles. Their names were not released.
SOURCE: NY Daily News | VIDEO SOURCE: News Inc.
