By Lisa Chmelecki,Staff Writer

Editor’s note: Names have been withheld from this story to protect the child’s identity.



LISBON FALLS – When a Lisbon Falls man asked his daughter about her day at school, he wanted to hear about the books she read, the pictures she drew, the games she played.

Instead, the kindergartner told her father about being chased in the gym, pinched at the snack table and blown kisses from across the playground.

Her admirer: a 5-year-old classmate.

The girl’s father and his ex-wife immediately contacted their daughter’s teacher at Huse Kindergarten Center in Bath. Measures were taken to stop the boy. But none worked.

The girl’s parents eventually pulled her from the school.

A year-and-a-half later, they have gained a key supporter in their fight against the Bath School Department.

An investigator for the Maine Human Rights Commission has concluded that school officials discriminated against the 5-year-old by not protecting her from her classmate’s constant harassment.

The complaint will next be heard by the commission, which is scheduled to vote on the case June 27. If the commissioners agree with the investigator, the parents can work to reach a settlement with school officials or sue them with the commission’s backing.

“It just seemed to drag on unnecessarily,” the father said. “It definitely turned our world upside down.”

The first incident occurred in September 2003, shortly after school began. The girl went home one day and told her mother that a boy in her class kissed her and she didn’t like it.

The mother immediately sent a letter to her daughter’s teacher, asking her to keep an eye on the boy. The teacher spoke to both children and promised the mother it would stop.

It didn’t.

According to Maine Human Rights Investigator Brenda Haskell, who interviewed the girl’s parents and school officials, the teacher continued to notice the boy trying to sit beside the girl, touch her and chase her.

Other students also reported that he talked of marrying her and lifting up her wedding dress.

“Watching him was not working,” the investigator concluded in her report. “Behavior is not connected to a switch that can be shut off.”

The teacher met with the boy’s mother in October and developed a behavioral plan for him. In the weeks that followed, the boy chased the girl, pinched her, told her he loved her and told her that he was going to her house and would touch her privates.

In November, at the request of the girl’s parents, the school transferred the boy to another classroom.

But, according to the investigator, that wasn’t enough. The two children continued to see each other in the gym and outside. The final straw for the girl’s parents was when the boy blew their daughter a kiss and told her he was going to get her.

“A phrase such as this when put in context with his other statements was not playful, it was threatening,” the investigator wrote.

According to the investigator’s report, school officials believe they took reasonable measures to fix the problem.

“Only two months elapsed from the date school started to the day he was moved out of her classroom,” they told the investigator. “They were kindergarten students. The school reasonably believed that his behavior could be corrected.”

The parents argued that two months was too long.

“It’s like she’s tainted,” the girl’s father said.