Suit Accuses School District of Sexual Harassment

A 17-year-old Agoura Hills student who was named on the Internet as the “ugliest girl” at her school has sued Las Virgenes Unified School District, claiming officials did nothing to stop “the escalating pattern of sexual harassment” by other students.

Sophomore Alison Goller quit Agoura High School after “the taunting became unbearable,” according to the lawsuit.

Alison was teased at first about her appearance, then accused of promiscuity, the suit alleged.

After a bout of mononucleosis, Alison returned to school last February to more taunting from classmates and a teacher, prompting her to leave the school.

“People really do mean things in high school,” Alison said in an interview Friday. “I’m really surprised nobody has brought a gun to school at Agoura.”

Deputy Supt. Donald Zimring said the school district never comments on student matters. But he said the district has protocols that include notifying police, and its administrators are trained to handle such situations.

“We are confident the school district did everything it was required to do,” he said.

Alison said she can relate to how tormented students in high schools from Columbine to Santee must have felt. But she said she never thought of harming anyone as a solution.

“It was not cool to be different at Agoura,” she said.

At her new high school in the Los Angeles Unified School District, which she declined to name, Alison said students are taught to respect each other and the kind of teasing that she endured at Agoura High is not tolerated.

Her mother, Catherine M. Adams, a lawyer, said she was dissatisfied with the response of Las Virgenes district officials to her request for their help in ending the harassment. She rejected their suggestion that Alison leave school and complete an independent study program.

“My feeling was, why does she have to stay home by herself with no education and no socialization while the kids who did this to her were at school,” Adams said.

Adams sued the school district and Assistant Principal Brad Benioff, who led an internal investigation into the complaints, on Dec. 14 in federal court in Los Angeles. Adams said she was never told the results of the inquiry.

The lawsuit claims her daughter’s civil rights were violated when she was “constructively expelled” from district schools by the sexual and gender-based harassment. The suit seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

Alison alleged her troubles began in the summer of 2000 when she was “humiliated and embarrassed” because her name appeared on a Web site under the category of “ugliest girl” in her school’s entering 10th-grade class, according to the lawsuit.

A few weeks later, a rumor circulated at the school that there was a videotape of Alison having sex with several boys at a party, and classmates began calling her “slut” and “whore,” the suit alleged.

Last February, Alison got mononucleosis and was absent for two weeks. When she returned to school, one teacher, in front of a class, put his shirt over his nose and mouth and said to Alison, “Get away from me, I don’t want to get mono,” according to the lawsuit.

Students also taunted her about the illness. One said, “I don’t know how you got mono. You’re so ugly, no guy would ever kiss you,” the suit said.

About the same time, her name appeared again on a Web site identifying her as “the ugliest girl at Agoura High School,” the suit alleged. The Web site, once used by San Fernando Valley students to anonymously hurl insults at one another, was shut down in March by its site provider.