Lynda Cutbill and Susan Rule Sandler (formerly Susan Shanahan), graduates of the 1982 class of a Long Island public high school, filed complaints in the Islip federal courthouse today seeking to hold the School District and Board of Education accountable for sexual abuse perpetrated against them by two teachers.

According to the Complaints, the District knew that the teachers had engaged in predatory behavior toward its girl students for many years. The Complaints state that instead of firing these dangerous men or reporting their child sexual abuse crimes to the police, the District covered up the abuse.

According to the Complaint, between 1978 and 1980, one teacher groomed, then sexually abused, 14-year-old Susan Shanahan during her freshman and sophomore years. The Complaint alleges that this teacher’s abuse included violently raping her during a trip to the 1980 Cotton Bowl Parade float competition in Dallas. It is also alleged that many of this teacher’s near-daily attacks occurred during the school day in a classroom storage area.

In March of 1980, Susan reported the abuse to the District officials and warned them that she believed this teacher was also abusing his own children. The Complaint details that the District decided not to report this teacher’s crimes to the police and permitted the teacher to quietly resign. It is also alleged that the District continued to grant the teacher access to the School after his resignation, enabling him to relentlessly retaliate against Susan until her 1982 graduation. In 2003, Wade County in North Carolina convicted this teacher of the crime of indecent liberties with a child: he had sexually abused his granddaughters. He became a registered sex offender.

“I am coming forward today, not just for me, and not just for my abuser’s other victims, but also for the countless others who, like me, struggle throughout their lives to survive both the torture of being sexually abused and the paralyzing fear that asking for help, even from the adults that were charged with protecting children, would be futile and would instead be met with hostility and demeaning retaliation,” said Susan Rule Sandler. “For decades, the School District has kept what my abuser did to me in the back of my science classroom and in Dallas, along with the cruelty of how they treated me after his abuse came to light, a secret. No more. Filing this lawsuit is the next necessary step in the fight for accountability and justice.”

According to the Complaint, from 1979 through 1982, another teacher sexually abused Lynda Cutbill from the time she was in middle school until she graduated from high school. This teacher used Lynda’s passion for art and ambition to be an artist to gain sexual access to her. Her teacher sexually abused her hundreds of times during the school day in his office and in an art storage area. The Complaint details that school administrators had been specifically told that this teacher was abusing another high school girl. Instead of firing this teacher, the Complaint alleges the District continued to grant him unsupervised access to the secluded areas within the school which he continued to use to abuse Lynda.

“On an almost daily basis beginning in middle school and lasting through high school graduation, my teacher sexually abused me hundreds of times during my school day,” said Lynda Cutbill. “He weaponized my passion for art and talent as an artist by demanding that I submit to his relentless sexual assaults as a condition of him mentoring me to success as a college art student and career as an artist. He chose to make me his victim because he knew that my home life was tumultuous and that school officials, who had received prior reports that he sexually abused another student, would callously turn a blind eye to obvious sexual abuse danger signs. I am coming forward today because no child should ever have to endure what I did and no institution, no matter how powerful, should be permitted to benefit from their complicit silence by escaping justice.”

“I applaud Lynda and Susan for having the courage to come forward and demand accountability and justice,” said ECBAWM partner Debbie Greenberger, who, along with Pennsylvania attorney Andrew Shubin, represents the plaintiffs. “We know that they are not these teachers’ only victims. I shudder to think about how many other victims there are who have stayed silent for years, believing they were the only girl these trusted teachers abused. We encourage witnesses to contact us.”

Greenberger and Shubin credit the 2018 New York Child Victims Act, which reformed the statute of limitations to provide child sexual abuse survivors like Lynda and Susan with a window (which expires on August 14, 2021) to file civil claims and demand accountability. “All child sexual abuse victims should have access to justice,” said Greenberger, “no matter their age.”