Quote:

---

A seven-year sexual relationship between two special needs students in Tewksbury that had been going on since first grade under school officials' noses was largely ignored because, administrators repeatedly testified yesterday, the attraction was clearly ``mutual.''


Loreen Bradley, who was the students' elementary school principal, said she didn't consider their behavior harassment or abuse since, ``I never received complaints specifically against one boy or another.''

Only after Wynn Middle School disciplinarian Robert Ware walked in on them in a boys' bathroom with their pants down around their calves in 2001 were the then-seventh-graders separated.


``They had heard me and they were pulling their pants up,'' Ware testified in U.S. District Court. ``They told me they were touching each others' privates. Both boys stated they agreed to do it.''


Nicholas and Ann Marie Porto, legal guardians of one boy, are hoping a jury of six women and two men will be persuaded to make Tewksbury officials pay for years of alleged neglect. The trial enters its fifth day today.


Even after the boys, one impaired by fetal alcohol syndrome and the other an adopted victim of sexual abuse, engaged in oral sex on a fifth-grade bus, the pair remained classmates.


Later, in seventh grade, months prior to the bathroom incident, the boys were caught fondling each other under a table and in gym class. Retired school psychologist William Travis said he met with the boys about the touching, but just once, and didn't report it to their parents or the Department of Social Services because, ``It was a mutual thing.''


In a meeting with school and law-enforcement authorities about the bathroom rendezvous in which one boy admitted to his aunt he was a willing participant, Ware said she screamed ``liar'' at him until the child was in tears.


``She said, `If this is the fact, I don't even want this boy in my house,' '' Ware said.

---

Quote:

---

In a meeting with school and law-enforcement authorities about the bathroom rendezvous in which one boy admitted to his aunt he was a willing participant, Ware said she screamed ``liar'' at him until the child was in tears.


``She said, `If this is the fact, I don't even want this boy in my house,' '' Ware said.

---