The parents of a 14-year-old girl in New Jersey who says her female teacher and mentor raped her are now suing the teacher and giving out troubling new details about how she allegedly talked about sex with their daughter and then touched her breasts in the school hallway.
People in Marlboro, New Jersey, are furious about the accusations because they say the school district and cops messed up the case and took too long to act.
The girl’s family said in court papers filed May 1 in Monmouth County Superior Court that Jenna Sciabica, a special education language arts teacher, touched the girl on March 13 at Marlboro Memorial Middle School.
Sciabica then “took both hands and began rubbing, poking,
“and touching both of [the teen’s] breasts inappropriately,” the family said.
Court papers say that while this was going on, Jenna Sciabica had a happy smile on her face while the teen was totally still and her hands were at her sides.
After “pulling them off her breasts,” the girl stopped Sciabica’s hands and ran down the hallway. Another teacher who saw what happened heard Sciabica yell at the girl, “Come back here, I want to feel and touch them again.”
The attack was “caught on camera in its entirety,” the document said.
The girl’s family said in the complaint that Sciabica “was already familiar” with her because she had been tutoring the girl’s younger brothers, who have special needs, for more than a year.
The teacher “would routinely and openly engage in sexually explicit and flirtatious conversations with female students at the school in her classroom and in front of other teachers,” the family said.
Sciabica is a “predator,” the mother of the accused victim told the Marlboro Board of Education at its public meeting on April 16. The mom said that the board “failed to stop the horrible thing that happened down that hallway.”
Officers from Marlboro charged the teacher with harassment, a misdemeanor, one day after the meeting and more than a month after the event.
This week’s lawsuit names the school district, the school board, and the Marlboro director, along with Sciabica.