CHARLESTON – A second civil lawsuit filed against a Holz Elementary teacher says she degraded a special needs student by, among other things, forcing her to stand in a garbage can and eat her lunch out of the sink.
Mark Pressman and Elizabeth Foley filed their complaint November 23 against Nancy Boggs and the Kanawha County Board of Education. They are the parents of a student identified only as S.P., a special needs student who suffers from Dandy-Walker malformation and requires assistance with education and daily living activities.
On November 18, Boggs was charged with 23 counts of battery and one count of verbal abuse of a non-communicative child. She was arraigned on the misdemeanor charges, and a trial date is set for April 4. The judge set a $100,000 bond.
Boggs
Boggs, 66, has been under investigation since September when a student reported an incident to a school employee who reported it to administration. She resigned from her position November 1.
“It is awful to think that something like this could happen to any child, much less to our most vulnerable children,” Steve Hastings, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, told The West Virginia Record. “We look forward to helping the family in their pursuit of justice.”
According to the complaint, Boggs subjected S.P. to physical and verbal abuse on at least five days in September. The complaint breaks the abuse down for each of the five days, obtained from watching video footage.
The list of Boggs’ actions against S.P. includes:
* Tying a bandana around the girl’s head and leaning over her while shaking her vigorously, pushing her head down to the desk and asking her how it feels being roughed up;
* Picking her up and throwing her in a chair;
* Telling her she was going in a garbage can because her parents don’t like her;
* Making her stand in a garbage can and eat her lunch out of the sink;
* Throwing her lunch in the sink bowl without cleaning the sink;
* Calling her a pig for allegedly making a mess in the sink;
* Telling the other students in class she was bad;
* Telling her she didn’t want to see her ugly face;
* Calling her nasty and crazy as well as singing a song about her being crazy;
* Hitting her in the back, hitting her with her knees and throwing her down on the floor;
* Making her sit on the floor with her nose in a hole in the wall Boggs called “S.P.’s hole;”
* Telling her she is a bad girl, a bad kid, the worst girl she’s ever seen, that her parents don’t want her or like her; that her parents hate her; that nobody wants her, likes her or cares about her; that she doesn’t need to learn how to read and that nobody wants to see her;
* Making her sit in the floor while using a broom to sweep garbage on her;
* Pulling a chair out from underneath her;
* Picking her up by her shirt and dropping her on the floor;
* Calling her a baby and making baby noises as well as calling her an “old crumb” and a “dirty girl;”
* Ridiculing her and having other students in class clap and make fun of her;
* Failing to give her all of her lunch;
* Dragging her across the floor and shoving her into the bathroom;
* Leaving her in the bathroom for about an hour and another time leaving her in the bathroom with no lights on;
* Segregating her from the other students;
* Ridiculing another student and telling him he is going to be a “dumb-dumb” like S.P.;
* Making her sit in the corner all day and blocking her from seeing the teaching activities in the classroom;
* Slamming her head into the desk, cutting her lip;
* Pulling her hair and hitting her with a cabinet door;
* Making her eat her lunch on the bathroom floor, giving her only four minutes to do so;
* Calling her a “dirty, nasty, bad, bad, bad … girl” and “a dirty bug;”
* Telling her to tell her father to take her back to her old school and that she “has no friends here.”
The complaint also says Boggs committed physical and verbal abuse against other students, including threatening, ridiculing and taunting them because of their disabilities.
The first lawsuit against Boggs was filed earlier in November by the parents of another special needs student who made similar claims about her.
S.P.’s parents –Pressman lives in Kanawha County and Foley lives in Texas – accuse the defendants of unlawful disability harassment and discrimination in violation of the West Virginia Human Rights Act, negligence, civil assault and battery as well as negligent hiring, supervision and retention. They seek compensatory damages for all economic and non-economic damages, pre- and post-judgment interest, attorney fees, court costs and other relief.
They are being represented by Hastings and David Hendrickson of Hendrickson & Long in Charleston. The case has been assigned to Circuit Judge Louis “Duke” Bloom.
Kanawha Circuit Court case number 21-C-1048
