Boy’s rights violated, suit says

CINCINNATI (AP) — School administrators gave verbal reprimands to a teacher and teacher’s aide who were accused in a lawsuit this week of humiliating an 11-year-old by tying his long hair into ponytails, according to personnel records.

The records released by the school district also show that two employees said they considered the Sept. 29 incident a joke, that the boy didn’t seem to mind it and that he laughed about it.

The boy’s mother, Amanda Anoai, filed the federal lawsuit this week in Cincinnati against the sixth-grade teacher, the aide, the Milford Exempted Village School District, the superintendent and the principal. It alleges the boy’s constitutional rights were violated and that the employees and school officials intentionally inflicted emotional distress.

The lawsuit said teacher Tori Bothe put the boy’s hair in ponytails and that Lori Boys took the boy to other sixth-grade classrooms at the Boyd E. Smith Elementary School to show his ponytails and that the women’s actions caused him “extreme humiliation and embarrassment.”

The women’s personnel files contain Oct. 15 letters from the district’s human resources director, Tim Ackermann, saying he met with Bothe on Sept. 30 and Boys on Oct. 1 and discussed “the inappropriateness of the incident.”

The letters say the women used poor judgment when joking with the student about his hair and that the meetings included a verbal reprimand.

Any similar incident in the future could lead to discipline ranging from a written reprimand to termination, the letters say.

The 11-year-old is referred to in the suit only as J.A.

“He told me he kept smiling because he didn’t want anyone to see how embarrassed he was or see him cry,” Anoai said. “He said he cried when he was in the bathroom alone.”