'They All Failed And Changed A Child': Malden Bullying Detailed

MALDEN, MA — On Oct. 23, 2017, 13-year-old Lucy's school day started with a nudge from another girl in a Linden STEAM Academy stairwell. An hour later, the girl told Lucy's little sister, “F—- you, I’m gonna get your sister."

Then Lucy had math class. She told her teacher she felt "physically unsafe."

Then, thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

The girl who earlier nudged Lucy punched her multiple times in the face, sat on her, and choked her for what Lucy said felt like a minute.

The teacher attempted to separate the girls, but he couldn't get through the throng of students.

Lucy finally broke free and ran to the hallway. She got behind a teacher, who stood in front of her to protect her.

The school day that started with a stairwell nudge ended in the school office, with Lucy holding an ice pack to her face, sporting a small cut on her wrist, and wearing bent glasses. She was later diagnosed with a mild concussion. "I’m petrified," she told a police officer. "I don’t feel safe."

The girl who attacked Lucy was charged with assault and battery and strangulation, and a court ordered her to stay away from Lucy. The girl was suspended for five days.

The incident was one of several experienced by Lucy in a bullying nightmare that spanned years. Patch reviewed police reports and emails from district and school officials from 2015-18 that show at least two incidents of school officials challenging the validity of her bullying claims. The state's education department said last month the district was negligent in keeping Lucy safe.

>>>Related: Malden Public Schools Failed To Protect Girl From Bullying, State Says

Superintendent John Oteri refused comment for this story, citing student and staff privacy concerns.

Patch is not identifying the juveniles in this story. Lucy is not the victim's real name.

The bullying incidents stretch back to 2014, when a male student told Lucy, "One of these days I'd like to rape and kill you," according to Lucy's mother. Her mother said it was chalked up to a young boy not understanding the weight of his words.

In the years that followed, however, taunting, threats, and abuse - and the fear of them - became part of Lucy's daily routine, her parents said. It had a noticeable effect on her life, in and out of school.

Lucy told police the girl who attacked her in October threw a balled-up note at her the week before, calling her a bitch. Lucy also told police she saw writing on the bathroom wall saying both her and her little sister were "ugly as f---."

Lucy was confident the girl who punched her wrote it.

A couple nights before the attack, Lucy received a photo message purportedly from one of the other female students who had been bullying her. The message, which is attached to a police report, reads, "I'm sorry but when you mess with my best friend who like a f---ing sister to me, you bes [sic] know I will not be afraid to f--- you up so watch."

Lucy's mom emailed Richard Bransfield, then principal of the Linden, a screenshot of the photo. "This is an obvious threat to [Lucy,]" she wrote.

After the beating, the girl who attacked Lucy admitted to police that she punched and choked her. She said Lucy had been "talking crap."

Bransfield told an officer that day, "[Lucy] has had problems with many students in the school," according to the police report.

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Lucy's mother told Patch the school intended on handling the October assault in-house.

"My daughter is the one who called me, and I had to tell [the school] to call the police," she said. "They thought I'd just come and pick her up and take her home."

Following the attack, an email from Bransfield said any assaults would be dealt with in accordance to state law. "First and foremast no one deserves or should be assaulted, hit, attacked etc.. by anyone for any reason. If it happens it is handled via the law's [sic] of the Commonwealth."

The police were called back in February, when Lucy was among three girls shown a video by a male student of himself masturbating and performing other sexual acts. The boy was suspended for two days, but Lucy was "a mess" afterward, her mother said.

Another February incident involved an unspecified social media recording posted online that appeared to target Lucy, her mother said.

In May, a female student slapped Lucy in the face in the hallway. The girl who slapped her was suspended for a day, but the district apparently didn't tell police.

Last month, the district was admonished by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for not reporting the slapping to police or the DOE, which would have been in line with the state law, the district's bullying prevention policy, and the email Bransfield had sent 10 months earlier. The district acknowledged noncompliance.

The DOE also said the district failed to provide proof of a safety plan for Lucy following the February social media posting.

The safety plan eventually came. It involved Lucy being shadowed by a staff member, releasing her and her little sister 10 minutes early, and altering class schedules.

But the bullying continued to escalate. Lucy's father filed a police report 12 days after the slapping saying the same group of students Lucy had problems with confronted his wife and two daughters while they were being picked up a block away from the school.

The students were threatening both her girls, Lucy's mother said.

"'We're gonna get your sister,'" she told Patch they said.

"If I hadn't been there she could have been in the ground. She would have been pulverized."

It was becoming clear to the parents that the district couldn't - or wouldn't - protect their daughter.

Shortly after the February social media recording, Bransfield said in an email to Lucy's parents that all three students involved in the recording admitted having a role in it. They also told Bransfield that Lucy had been hurling racial slurs at them for a period of time, calling them "black horses" and the n-word.

Lucy is white, while the majority of students that were bullying her are black.

Lucy's parents deny that their daughter uses such language, saying the only reports of her using it came from her bullies and their parents. No teachers corroborated such claims in any of the documents obtained by Patch, although one of the students' parents told Patch she heard Lucy use a racial slur.

Largely because of her propensity to talk back - which Lucy's parents acknowledged in an email is a problem - Bransfield at least twice questioned whether Lucy was truly being bullied.

In the October email in which Bransfield said assaults would be handled in accordance to state law, he also said, "I do not blame [Lucy] for any of this and understand her issues.. but at the end of the day, I worry that her continued 'talking' to others ... is a problem. It clearly 'muddy's' the bullying claim."

A November 2016 email from Bransfield to Lucy's mother said: "I always remind parents about the term 'bully or bullying' often times gets used improperly or just overused in general ... I often hear that [Lucy] 'fires back' at students mostly with her words. She does not back down and often times adds to the situation. I hear that a lot.. and that backlash takes bullying completely off the table."

Lucy has been suspended twice, once when she slapped a male student who "put his hands on her," her mother said. The other suspension came after another student put their hands on Lucy, though her mother insists Lucy didn't retaliate that time.

An officer writing the police report after the October assault didn't expect a quick resolution.

"I suggested that [Lucy's] mother transfer her to a different school," the officer wrote. The mother said she would.

Ten months later, after the incidents in May, Lucy was pulled out of Linden. She finished the year with a tutor supplied by the school. Her mother couldn't fathom sending her to Malden High, where the other girls who bullied her would be.

The family applied to an out-of-district school on the North Shore. They were told there was a waitlist more than 500 names long.

But days after the DOE came down on the district in August, granting Lucy and her family validation, they gained a victory. It came in the form of a phone call that said Lucy had been accepted to the school.

"That's the best news that I've had in years," Lucy's mother said. "I cried. I called her ... She started crying. It's like the only thing that has worked out for our family."

Lucy's little sister transferred schools within the district.

These things don't go away, even when the abuse does.

"[Lucy's] well being, emotionally, physically, and psychologically, must be protected," Lucy's therapist Gail Allex Maurer told Bransfield in an email following the October assault.

Lucy was not only the subject of the abuse, but often made to feel like the cause of it.

"They all failed and changed a child," Lucy's mother told Patch.

When Lucy learned that Bransfield wouldn't be back next year - for reasons Oteri declined to specify when reached in March - she was one of the first to make him a card, her mother said.

After years of being blamed for the bullying she suffered, she had one question about Bransfield not coming back.

"Is that because of me?"

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THE BULLY MENACE SERIES

Throughout the year, Patch is looking at society's roles and responsibilities in bullying and a child's unthinkable decision to end their own life in hopes we might offer solutions that save lives.

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Main photo by Mike Carraggi, Patch