Mom sues Pittsburgh Public Schools, Starbucks over daughter's alleged rape during school hours

The mother of a Pittsburgh teen who claims her daughter was raped during the school day by three fellow Allderdice High School students at a nearby Starbucks has filed a lawsuit over the incident.

The lawsuit, which includes claims for negligence, was filed Tuesday in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court. It names as defendants Pittsburgh Public Schools, Starbucks and 101 Kappa Drive Associates #1, which owns the property where the coffee shop is located on Murray Avenue in Squirrel Hill.

According to the lawsuit, the alleged victim has severe intellectual disabilities which “caused her to be significantly more vulnerable to physical and verbal violence and threats than other students.”

The complaint alleged that in October 2022 three male students took the girl from school to the Starbucks in the middle of the school day. They escorted her into the unlocked bathroom, where two of them took turns raping her, the lawsuit said.

They then left with the girl and took her to an unmonitored construction area on the Kappa property where the third student raped her, the lawsuit alleged.

Starbucks employees saw the three male students take the girl into the bathroom and go back and forth, always leaving her with one of them, but did nothing about it, according to the complaint.

The girl was described in the lawsuit as “incompetent and incapable of giving consent, and she was confused, scared, sad and upset, which was obvious to Starbucks’ employees…”

One of the students, the complaint said, was known to have a criminal background, including a history of drug use, drug dealing, violence and fleeing from police.

“Because Starbucks did not have security or trained staff present in its store, the students took turns going back and forth from the bathroom as they sexually assaulted and raped her. Because Kappa did nothing to supply security to its premises on the day Jane Doe Minor was sexually assaulted and raped, the students also sexually assaulted and raped her in a building behind Starbucks, to which they had access.”

The lawsuit said the girl sustained severe psychological harm, including anxiety and mental anguish.

Cara Cruz, a Pittsburgh police spokeswoman, said that the case was fully investigated by detectives with the bureau’s special victims unit.

“All of the evidence was presented to the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office, which ultimately determined there would be no charges filed in this case,” Cruz said.

Messages left with District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. were not returned.

It is unclear why no charges were filed against the three suspects.

Pittsburgh Public Schools Solicitor Ira Weiss said on Wednesday that the district has retained special counsel from the Downtown firm Pietragallo Gordon Alfano Bosick & Raspanti, including Lourdes Sánchez Ridge, a former City of Pittsburgh solicitor.

Weiss said he could not comment on the specifics of the lawsuit, other than to note that the alleged assault took place off-campus.

“This did not take place in a Pittsburgh Public Schools building or on school grounds,” he said. “We will treat it seriously, and we will defend it.”

Starbucks said in a statement: “When we learned of these allegations, we acted with extreme urgency to support law enforcement throughout their investigation. Our goal is always to keep our stores safe for our partners and our customers.”

According to the complaint, there have been problems in the area near the school since the district required about 1,000 students to commute by public transit and established a bus stop in front of the Starbucks at Murray and Forward avenues in January 2021.

“The immediate cause of the increased criminal activity was the unsupervised and unmonitored student population from Allderdice at the Starbucks Bus Stop,” the complaint said.

The lawsuit alleged that at least 78 official reports of criminal conduct were made in that area from Jan. 2021 to December 2022.

That included an increase in vandalism, drug dealing, loitering, assaults and verbal altercations at that location. A fight at that location in September 2022 resulted in a Pittsburgh police officer being injured and students being shocked with a Taser, according to the lawsuit.

After that, a Pittsburgh police officer was stationed at the location for one hour each afternoon, the complaint said.

The lawsuit also alleged that the student’s mother told school officials that she was concerned about her daughter’s ability to use public transportation and that she would need help transitioning to high school.

The lawsuit said that the girl was tardy or unexcused from school at least 25 out of 35 school days, yet the district did not enforce its absence policies and continued to allow her to miss class.

Further, it alleges that school employees allowed the girl to leave class to roam the halls of the school or hide in the bathroom, and they failed to provide her with a safety plan or place her in a life skills program.

The lawsuit was submitted to the Allegheny County Department of Court Records on Jan. 24. However, it was initially rejected because of a technical issue and was not refiled until this week.