OUTRAGE (At 1:40 p.m. in this Staten Island HS, a 15 year old girl was brutally raped by two thugs.  The teachers union’s response?  It could happen at any city school, any time.)

Angelo Romero, a 20 year old special ed student at Staten Island's New Dorp High School, has been charged with first and third degree rape and other sex charges in the brutal rape of a 15 year old girl in a bathroom at the school.  The attack allegedly occurred at 1:40 p.m. in a teachers lavatory on Wednesday during school hours.  The second floor bathroom is kept locked but Romero somehow got a key and pulled the alleged victim inside along with another male.  Romero then tried to force the girl to perform oral sex on him and his cohort.  When the girl refused, he allegedly pushed her to the floor and raped her.  Romero is being held on $25,000 bail.  He is known to many in the school and in the neighborhood where he lives for making creepy come-ons to women and leering so hard at female neighbors that they felt unsafe.  

Education officials said yesterday that the brutal rape shows that school violence is not isolated to a few eduction trouble spots.  This kind of thing could happen anywhere, said Jim Baumann, safety director for the city's teachers union.  It's the same problem across the city, added Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.  All of our schools have to be serious about dealing with these issues.  We've got to make sure there are real consequences for students.

The alleged attack made some wonder how it could have happened in a busy school, where 12 safety officers are assigned.  New Dorp is not one of 12 schools that have received an intense security boost in response to recent violence concerns.

(New York)