Joseph Golden recalls his time at Chancellor High School as the most miserable years of his life.
Now he wants three classmates to pay.
Golden, a 2004 graduate of the Spotsylvania County school, is suing the boys over what he describes as repeated assaults and ridicule during his high school career.
"It was the same thing every day," the 19-year-old Golden said recently at the office of Marcel Jones, one of his attorneys. "The minute I walked through those doors, hell had begun."
The suit names the boys as Golden's primary tormentors. He is seeking $150,000 in compensatory and punitive damages from each, plus attorney fees.
An amended version of the suit was filed last month in Spotsylvania Circuit Court. Only one of the defendants had filed a formal response to the suit as of this week.
That boy's attorney, William Sokol, said Golden's claims don't merit a trial.
"It is a case that should have never been brought," Sokol said. His client is accused of trying to pick fights with Golden, among other things. Sokol said his client denies all of the allegations against him.
The Free Lance-Star is not identifying the defendants because they were juveniles at the time the alleged harassment occurred.
In the suit, Golden's attorneys claim another defendant repeatedly shoved Golden into walls and called him a "faggot."
The suit cites an alleged incident in which that boy forced a plastic bag over Golden's head and stated, "You look good with this on, faggot."
Golden said he is not homosexual.
A second defendant, the suit alleges, also bullied Golden repeatedly. Golden claims that boy hit him in the neck with a pen and used Golden's name as his own when a substitute teacher attempted to discipline him.
When Golden pointed out the discrepancy, according to the suit, the boy attempted to pick a fight.
On another occasion, Golden said, the second defendant called Golden the "Columbine kid" in the presence of others and asked him if he was "going to bring a gun to school and shoot everybody."
Golden, who was in special-education classes at the school, said students and teachers falsely accused him of staring at people on numerous occasions. The third defendant, Sokol's client, is named in the suit as one of the more frequent offenders.
The suit alleges that the boy also tried to pick fights with Golden for no reason.
Neither the school nor any teachers are named as defendants in the suit, but an Aug. 2 letter sent to the Spotsylvania School Board makes it clear that Golden holds several teachers responsible for his torment.
In the letter written by attorney Owaiian Jones, Golden recites incidents listed in the lawsuit and claimed that teachers witnessed many and did nothing.
The letter accuses a male teacher of watching the first defendant push Golden into walls and put the plastic bag over his head, "yet refused to take any protective or disciplinary action."
Golden claims a female teacher heard a student threaten to kill Golden but continued teaching her class as if nothing had happened.
Several teachers are named in the letter as having promoted the notion that Golden was a starer, including one who accused him of staring at her daughter.
"[Certain] teachers targeted me," Golden said. "They literally fueled the fire."
Arnold Golden, the plaintiff's father, said he had several conferences with school officials over the years to try to stop the abuse. But he said things never got better.
"We made a big mistake by keeping him in that school," Arnold Golden said. "To see your kid come home from school and start cryingit hurts."
Spotsylvania School Superintendent Jerry Hill said he doesn't doubt that Golden faced some harassment.
But Hill said it's hard to tell exactly what happened, as school officials can't witness every incident. He said administrators documented the complaints they received.
"I'm pretty confident we did what we could do," Hill said.
Bullying goes on at all schools, said School Board Chairman Richard Fleming. But he said teachers and principals address it when they see it.
"Once they're aware of it, they take care of it," Fleming said.
Spotsylvania has policies to cut down on bullying, Hill said. Signs preaching respect hang in schools, security cameras film incidents and teachers try to correct problems as they arise.
Fleming, a School Board member for 11 years, was surprised to hear of the suit. He lives two doors down from Golden's family and knows Joseph personally. And he said he never heard him complain about bullying.
Golden's suit isn't without national precedent. Hill said this is the third time he's heard of a student suing another over alleged bullying. The other two were in New Mexico and Oklahoma; neither was successful.
Most high-profile bullying lawsuits are against school districts or boards, said Dena Rosenkrantz, senior staff attorney for the Virginia Education Association.
They're usually federal cases in which plaintiffs claim the school violated their right to equal protection.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that school boards can be liable for severe student-on-student harassment if they know about it and do nothing to stop it. Rosenkrantz said it's tough for plaintiffs to show the school was deliberately indifferent.
"There's a lot of deference shown to schools," she said. "Courts don't want to be in the business of running schools."
She said it's easier to win a personal-injury case--like the one Golden filed--against individual students.
Joseph Golden, the youngest of six children, recently left Spotsylvania to attend Columbia College in Chicago.
Being "singled out every single day" was hard, he said, but "through the grace of God I got through it. My wish is that this never happens to another child."
To reach KEITH EPPS: 540/374-5404 kepps@freelancestar.com