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Teacher Threatens To Out Student

International News, By Christian Taylor, 15th March, 2010

A teacher at a South Bronx school threatened to “out” a nine year old school student.

According to papers filed in a civil suit against the chairman of the South Bronx Charter School for International Culture and The Arts, Richard Izquierdo Arroyo, the chairman failed to protect the young student, James Pastrana, from Jared Alessandroni, a teacher who threatened to “out” him.

According to the New York Daily News, the suit alleges that the teacher repeatedly called the student, now 10 years old, ‘gay’. According to a second lawsuit, Alessandroni twisted an 8-year-old boy’s arm in a school stairwell in 2008 because he didn’t like the way the boy was walking.

Young Pastrana’s father claims that “there were a lot of sexually inappropriate comments directed toward [his] son”. The 29 year old teacher has since resigned and denies the charges. The school Principal has no comment. A spokesman for the charter’s operator, Victory Schools, said the claims are “baseless”.

According to The New York Post, the teacher told the young boy that he would “out” him unless he told one of his classmates, a girl that he had a crush on, that he was gay.

“I was so humiliated,” said Pastrana, who wrote the false confession on a note to the girl. “It started to spread around the whole class and then everyone wanted to call me gay.”