Posted on: Tuesday, May 15, 2001

Nanakuli High student, parents sue DOE over pornographic images

By David Waite
Advertiser Courts Writer

A girl who was a sophomore at Nanakuli High School last year and her parents are suing the state Department of Education, claiming a Nanakuli High teacher and school administrators did nothing to prevent a boy at the school from using a school computer to graft the girl's image onto sexually explicit images downloaded from the Internet.

The lawsuit, filed in federal court yesterday by attorney Venetia Carpenter-Asui on behalf of the girl and her parents, claims that the teacher and a school administrator wanted to downplay the incident and tried to browbeat the girl into withdrawing her complaint.

School officials could not be reached to comment on the matter yesterday evening.

The suit says Department of Education officials knew, or should have been aware, that computers in public high school classrooms in Hawai'i could be used improperly since a Pearl City student was arrested last year for sending threats via the Internet to a high school in New Jersey.

The doctored pornographic image of the girl who filed suit, as well as images of at least three other students at Nanakuli High School, were e-mailed back and forth among other students at the school on the school's computers, according to the lawsuit.

The suit seeks an unspecified amount in damages.