A Chadds Ford family has filed suit against the Unionville-Chadds Ford School District for what they allege are false charges of harassment against their son and his wrongful expulsion from school. The 41-page complaint, filed by Kevin and Renata Brabank on behalf of their son Ford, calls for a jury trial.
The Brabanks are represented in the suit by Bradley Flynn, an attorney with Montgomery Law. Mark Fitzgerald, of Fox Rothschild, is representing the school district. Fitzgerald said he couldn’t comment for privacy reasons because the suit involves a student.
According to Kevin Brabank, it’s all about getting justice for his son who was suspended from school for actions he was never found guilty of doing. He was also threatened with being sent to a school for delinquents. The allegations involved sexual harassment and terroristic threats from an Instagram account in the name of Gerhart Eisler, an East German communist who died in 1968.
But the family wasn’t told about that initially.
“The only thing we were told was that he was accused of doing ‘something that if done by an adult would be a felony,’” the father said in an interview earlier this year. It’s taken this long to bring the suit.
Ford Brabank, now an 18-year-old senior at Unionville High School, was a 10th grader in October of 2021 when someone wrote in a boy’s bathroom, “10/6/21 Bullets will fly.” The suit against the district says police dusted the area of the bathroom wall for fingerprints, but prints found failed to match those of Ford Brabank.
In December 2021, a female student received a harassing message about rape in an Instagram direct message. But, according to Kevin Brabank, the messages would self-delete as soon as they were read.
The girl asked who was sending the message, but all she received was a photo of a forehead. Her friend took a photo of the phone with that image.
Brabank said his family eventually saw that image, describing it as looking like “a bushy-haired kid, with wavy hair, a kid we don’t even know. It could have been a 70-year-old woman for all we know. All it was a hairline. It was brown hair, curly and bushy. My son has similar hair.”
She told the message sender that she was scared by all the rape talk and the sender reportedly wrote back, “See you on the bus.”
The girl asked if it was Ford and a message came back: “You got me.” And then the message read, “You know that thing on the bathroom wall? That was me.”
Ford Brabank has denied all the allegations, and the complaint reads: “It is notable that at the time the female student made the report to the district that there was no credible evidence linking F.B. to any of the allegations.”
The complaint continues saying that the district never provided proof or demonstrated that the accused was responsible for any of the alleged actions. It also contends that the boy was denied procedural fairness with no access to evidence against him or to have an attorney present. A stenographer was also dismissed in the middle of the Dec. 6, 2021, hearing, the suit contends.
The complaint further says that, because of the texted rape threat, Ford Brabank was entitled to Title IX protection, which he never received. Nor was there any evidence that Ford Brabank sent any of the messages.
“The district excluded F.B. from school even though it lacked any credible evidence that F.B. had engaged in the alleged conduct and that he presented a threat. In fact, the principal even admitted that he lacked evidence that F.B. was responsible for the conduct. Moreover, the District never determined that F.B. was responsible for any of the alleged conduct at its hearing.”
(Gerhart Eisler, born in Leipzig in 1897, became a communist agitator in the United States following WWII. He was imprisoned in 1949 because he would not agree to become a sworn witness for the House Un-American Activities Committee. For more information about Eisler, go here.)
About Rich Schwartzman
Rich Schwartzman has been reporting on events in the greater Chadds Ford area since September 2001 when he became the founding editor of The Chadds Ford Post. In April 2009 he became managing editor of ChaddsFordLive. He is also an award-winning photographer.
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