Scituate vice principal accused of bullying students

By: Chloe Leshner

Email: cleshner@abc6.com

Twitter: @CLeshnerABC6

SCITUATE, R.I. (WLNE) — The vice principal of the Scituate Middle and High school was accused of bullying a student, the family filing a police report after they say David Sweet aggressively confronted their son.

That family says assistant principal David Sweet crossed the line when he put his face inches from their sons and used profanity when disciplining him.  

"They were in the office and he turned around and leaned in towards Jared’s face and told him he wasn’t going to listen to his eff-ing bull—-,” says Crystal Carpenter, the 8th graders mom.

She says her son wasn’t given the chance to defend himself before he was sent to detention.

“I send my kids to school trusting that the staff members there have the best interest of my son and teaching them what’s right and wrong and in my eyes that’s just teaching them that that type of behavior is okay and it’s not," she says.

The family filed a police report and police are not investigating it further. The school’s investigation found that the allegations were true. The superintendent says they took disciplinary action and other parents shouldn’t worry.

"We handled the situation and if there was any similar type of situation, which I’m confident that there shouldn’t be, we would expect that the parent would contact us so that we could solve the problem for them," says Lawrence Filippelli, the superintendent of Scituate Schools.

But incidents like this don’t shock some Scituate parents. Town Council President John Mahoney says not only does he get countless calls about this from concerned parents, but that he’s had the same experience.

"Along the lines of invading my sons personal space, militant style finger in the face type of discipline and when I asked Mr. Sweet as to why he uses this approach, he turned that same kind of aggressive conduct on me," says Mahoney.

School officials couldn’t specify what consequences Mr. Sweet faced but he did say he was at work today. Meanwhile the Carpenter family has been looking into other schools for their kids. 

©WLNE-TV / ABC6 2017