A Brooklyn teenager was blinded in one eye after being assaulted by bullies who shouted anti-gay epithets during an attack at his middle school, his family says.
Kardin Ulysse, 14, has undergone two surgeries on his right eye since the June 5 attack in the cafeteria at Roy H. Mann Junior High School in Bergen Beach.
"I can't see from my right eye," Ulysse said. "I can't see from it at all."
Ulysse now wears a bandage over his right eye. Doctors are not sure if the blindness occurred as a result of the punches or by shards of glass from his eyeglasses.
"They were beating him, kicking him, punching him in the face many, many times," Ulysse's father, Pierre Ulysse, said at a news conference Tuesday.
The eighth-grader says he was beaten up by a pair of seventh-graders who shouted insults and slurs at him, including "transvestite" and "gay," according to the report put out by the Department of Education.
One classmate pinned Kardin Ulysse down while the other punched him repeatedly. The fight continued in the cafeteria until it was broken up by school safety officers and school aides, according to the boy.
At the news conference Tuesday, other parents said their children at the school have also been hurt.
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"I don't come to school to get picked on and bullied every day," said 13-year-old Andriana, who has scratches on her face after someone assaulted her.
"It's just gruesome to me right now," the girl said. Her mother has vowed to call police, saying her daughter has been subjected to assaults twice before the most recent incident.
The parents said they want city officials to do more.
"My daughter's going into eighth grade next year," said parent Kim Merrick. "I would never want anything to happen to her."
The Ulysse family has filed a $16 million lawsuit again the Department of Education for failing to properly supervise the students, and their lawyer said the school report was evidence that the attack was unprovoked.
"This should not have happened in this school," said attorney Sanford Rubenstein. "This should not have happened in this school system."
Department of Education spokeswoman Margie Feinberg said in a statement that the boy's beating was "taken very seriously," noting that two students were arrested.
"The matter is under investigation," Feinberg added.
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