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Parents sue Armstrong district for failing to protect daughter
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By Tribune-Review
Published: Wednesday, November 21, 2012, 3:26 p.m.
Updated: Thursday, November 22, 2012
The parents of a Kittanning High School student claim in a federal civil rights lawsuit filed Wednesday that the Armstrong County School District failed to protect her from a former girls tennis coach convicted of groping her during practice.
The parents and daughter are only identified by initials in the lawsuit. They are suing the district and the coach, Dennis Lee Zellefrow, 64, of Kittanning, who pleaded guilty in September 2011 to corruption of minors and indecent assault.
Al Lindsay, one of the lawyers representing them, said the district violated the daughter's 14th Amendment right to bodily integrity.
Butler County Common Pleas Judge William Shaffer sentenced Zellefrow in October 2011 to up to three months in jail, four years and nine months of probation and fined him $750, according to court records.
Zellefrow and a spokesman for the district couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
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@ Richie. Zellafrow admitted to molesting this child. He was obsessed with her. You should be ashamed of yourself to even insinuate that this child made this story up. The school did fail her, I'm glad that our DA is standing up and defending children.
Submitted by: Richie on Thursday, November 22, 2012
I am not in anyway trying to disregard what happened to this child I truly feel for the situation and the family ..But why is it that the Armstrong county has the highest rate of children who are claiming to be molested higher than any other county in PENNSYLVANIA and higher than any in the trial state area Armstrong is in the news paper for some child molestation every month sometimes 5-6 times!? And most of the cases wind up going through the court system and peter out as false claims or are flat out proven to be lies made up often by the child or family of the child .why isn't someone at the newspapers writing a story on The DA and his wasteful spending on these cases and asking what is going on up there instead of adding more fuel to these match stick fires that are burning out as quickly as they start it seems every child up their most know some one who this has happened to children's youth or whatever its called these days must realise its become an epidemic up in Armstrong county surely the state must see these statistics but my question is why isn't an investigative reporter looking into this its out of control up in Armstrong and everyone seems to ignore it the courts keep these files locked and they should but there are records kept that keep the names of the families involved private ,someone should be looking into this as an independent watchdog for the public if its all true and on the up and up then people should know that its a predator infected area and given the knowledge so they can keep there families out of the county so it does not spread or continue to feed the fire ,as also if its turning out to be more bull than truth then they need to go public to put a stop to whatever is causing it to be this way . Its become a public safety issue courthouse scheduling must see this as an inflated since the 2005 year
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