HUNTERDON COUNTY, New Jersey (LifeSiteNews) — A Catholic pro-life high school student has sued her New Jersey school district after she was assaulted while holding a pro-life sign at a pro-abortion protest.
Seventeen year-old Nichole Pagano filed a lawsuit late last month against the Hunterdon Central’s Board of Education and District in New Jersey, for allegedly failing to protect her when she was attacked while holding a pro-life sign at a pro-abortion protest in 2022, according to New Jersey 101.5.
According to the lawsuit, Pagano was attacked at the “school-sanctioned riot” as teachers stood by “but did nothing to intervene.” The suit further attests that the school encouraged students to attend the protest and allowed them to make signs for it during class time.
The lawsuit seeks compensation for negligent supervision, assault, battery, and defamation.
In 2022, Nichole was attacked as she and her sister, Vanessa, approached the crowd of about 200 students while carrying a sign reading, “Equal Rights For Babies in the Womb.”
Nichole recounted that, “There’s like 200 kids there and then all of a sudden they come surrounding us — mostly trying to come at me and attack me because I had the sign – and then they came at me all up in my face, verbally screaming at me, and physically even grabbed me and ripped me down.”
According to Nichole, both school principal Edward Brandt and School superintendent Jeffrey Moore publicly apologized to her at the time.
“It didn’t seem like too big of an apology, though,” Nichole said, referring to Brandt’s apology. “It kind of seemed like a quick, short, little apology. It didn’t seem very long and even seem that concerning.
At the meeting, New Jersey state assemblyman Erik Peterson harshly criticized the school’s response to the situation, saying Nichole “is the victim, not the ‘counter-protester.’ She was assaulted. It’s on video.”
“The problem, from my perspective, is the leadership,” he added. “These kids didn’t learn this on their own, they learned it here. And it starts with this board and the superintendent.”
Nichole revealed that after the public apology, she “didn’t hear anything from anyone.” Likewise, she said, and her father confirmed, that the school failed to contact her parents.
Abortion-related violence against pro-lifers has skyrocketed since the historic overturning of Roe v. Wade last year.
In late May, two pro-lifers in Baltimore, Maryland were viciously attacked outside an abortion facility on Friday, leaving one man in hospital with a fractured bone in his face, according to local activists.
On May 2, Shellyne Rodriguez, an adjunct assistant professor at Hunter College in New York City, was caught on video harassing two pro-life students before vandalizing their pro-life table.
A few weeks later, Rodriguez was fired after she was caught on video holding a machete to New York Post reporter Reuven Fenton’s neck.
In April, pro-lifers from the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform were showing abortion victim photography at the University of Arizona when pro-abortion students hurled eggs at them.
In March, LifeSiteNews reported that two activists faced felony charges after being accused of robbing a pro-lifer and resisting arrest by attacking a police officer during a pro-life event at the University of Florida.
Similarly, during a recent speech by Students for Life of America president Kristan Hawkins at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), Antifa members with messages of “Black Lives Matter” and “Transgender Power” broke out in violent protest. Two arrests have been made in connection with the attack.