Harassment by kids gets ex-teacher 50G

By JOHN MARZULLI NY DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

The city will pay a former Queens teacher $50,000 to settle an unusual lawsuit charging he was harassed by special-education students who mocked his accent and threatened to beat him, the Daily News has learned. Vincent Peries, who is from Sri Lanka, accused administrators of doing nothing to help him after he complained that students at Francis Lewis High School in Fresh Meadows called him "Gandhi" and immigrant "----."

Legal experts said the suit was the first of its kind in which a teacher successfully brought a civil rights action alleging that students had created a "hostile work environment."

The settlement was reached after a six-day trial in Brooklyn Federal Court ended in a hung jury this month, Peries' lawyer, Jeffrey Slade, said yesterday.

Peries, 68 and retired, was seeking $250,000 in damages. He is still under psychiatric care for depression caused by eight years of student abuse, Slade said.

According to court papers, school officials said they could not discipline emotionally troubled special-education students simply for verbal misconduct.

Slade said the case opened the door for other teachers to "sue school officials for failing to take appropriate remedial action when faced with a pattern of student harassment."

He said the amount of the settlement was less than Peries was hoping for, but he made the decision to forgo another trial because of his fragile psyche.

"The trial had brought back all the bad memories," he said.

A spokeswoman for the city Law Department did not return a call for comment.

-- Anonymous, July 23, 2002

Answers

I think more teachers should sue, but the parents, not the just the school.

That should get some folks' attention, and maybe warm a few behinds...

-- Anonymous, July 23, 2002

My neighbor's daughter is a teacher and she was slammed up against a wall by a disgruntled parent (who was three times her size). Scared her to death but she only has a couple more years to retirement so she's still hanging in. It's caused her to think twice or more before disciplining an unruly student.

-- Anonymous, July 23, 2002