A pro-life student who was assaulted after holding a sign at a pro-abortion protest has filed suit against the school district for failing to protect her.
Nichole Pagano was attacked after she brought a pro-life sign to a pro-abortion protest organized at Hunterdon Central Regional High School in Raritan Township, New Jersey, on May 16, 2022. The protest was organized after the leaked decision indicating the Supreme Court’s overturn of Roe v. Wade.
Seeing the event, Pagano and her sister Vanessa decided to take a stand for life. Nichole, who was 16 years old at the time, held a sign that said “Equal Rights For Babies in the Womb.” As a result, she was violently attacked by the students, both verbally and physically.
Nichole’s father, Michael, spoke with Live Action News following the incident. “She was holding the sign, and she got attacked by all these kids. There were 200 kids there, and eventually, it got bigger and bigger,” he said. “There was a lot of chaos. Teachers are there, superintendents are there — people were there. They knew. They knew about it.”
NJ 101.5 reports that the Pagano family filed a lawsuit last month due to the abuse Nichole suffered at the “school-sanctioned riot.” According to the court documents, teachers allowed students to make their pro-abortion signs during class time and then encouraged students to attend the protest. The lawsuit contends that teachers and administrators saw Nichole being assaulted, “but did nothing to intervene.”
At a school board meeting following the event, Superintendent Jeffrey Moore condemned the attack against Nichole.
“I want to reiterate, certainly the most distressing moments of this incident were in the behavior that was shown to counter-protesters who had arrived and those involved,” Moore said. “Shoving, expletive-laden verbal aggression, vandalism to signs, signs were knocked over, thrown, kicked, all of those things that made this a most distressing and disrespectful scene and example of student behavior against a student there who showed up with another viewpoint.”
According to NJ 101.5, “the lawsuit lays out claims of negligent supervision, assault, battery, and defamation. It seeks a jury trial.”
