Parents allege daughters were victims of fake porn, sue school for allegedly failing to respond

The parents of four female students at Bishop Luers High School in Fort Wayne are suing the school and members of its faculty for failing to notify police about a group of male students who allegedly created fake pornographic images of the victims and distributed them among their peers.

Also named as defendants in the lawsuit, which was filed Jan. 21 in Marion Superior Court, are the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis, Inc., and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend.

According to court documents, the victims first became aware of the edited photos and videos in September 2023 but suspect the content began circulating as early as 2022.

The parents and their daughters, who are not named in the lawsuit, allege that at least three minor male classmates used images and videos from internet sources like Pornhub to create, edit, and sell video montages and still images of pornographic content with the victims’ names on them.

The content features the victims’ names but not the victims themselves. Plaintiffs said they don’t know whether the females in the images are adults, children, or both, and have sought federal and local law enforcement’s assistance in investigating if children are depicted in the content.

According to the lawsuit, faculty with the high school and the diocese knew about the content as early as February 2023 but failed to report it to authorities or notify the victims’ parents.

A lawyer for the school and diocese did not immediately respond to Indiana Lawyer’s request for comment. The Archdiocese of Indianapolis also did not immediately respond.

The plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Gregory Laker, Andrea Simmons and Molly McMath of Indianapolis-based law firm Cohen & Malad LLC.

“The sexual exploitation these minors have suffered is profoundly dehumanizing,” Simmons said in written remarks on the law firm’s website. “To have victims further harmed by leadership’s deliberate concealment of the crimes reflects a shocking indifference for the dignity and well-being of students.”

“The affected students and their families were repeatedly ignored and lied to by those in leadership, whose only concern appeared to be the perpetrators wellbeing and the Bishop Luers’ reputation. Our clients have lost all trust in the church school’s leadership, and now seek justice for themselves and the other victims through the only course Bishop Luers, the Diocese and Archdiocese has left them,” Laker said in a statement in the Indiana Lawyer. “This lawsuit is about the culture of silence and denial that too often surrounds abuse in schools and religious organizations, as well as holding individuals and institutions accountable when they fail – in this case deliberately so – to protect children entrusted to their care.”

The plaintiffs believe the male students created content that displays the first and last names of approximately 34 current and former female students, most of whom were minors at the time.

These images were allegedly shared or sold to students at Bishop Luers and other area high schools, including to members of the Bishop Luers football team and other area football teams.

In September 2023, when the female students learned about the images and went to report it, they claim they were told by defendant Kevin Mann, who is the dean of students and athletic director at Bishop Luers, that he was already aware of the content.

Three of the male students involved in creating and distributing the images were still allowed to participate on their sports teams after defendants learned they were involved, according to the lawsuit.

When the victims’ parents confronted Mann about the images, he allegedly told them that in his opinion, no crime had been committed and therefore the high school had no duty to contact authorities.

The lawsuit alleges the defendants “engaged in a plan and scheme to ignore, conceal and/or avoid discovery of these videos, and defendants’ wrongful conduct facilitated the on-going exploitation and abuse of minor children at Bishop Luers.”

The lawsuit claims defendants failed to enforce policies set forth in the archdiocese, diocese, and Bishop Luers handbooks and committed a criminal violation of Indiana Code 31-33-22-1, failure to make a report.

Plaintiffs are suing defendants for fraudulent concealment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligence/gross negligence, in addition to other charges specific to the defendants that allegedly had knowledge of the images well before victims did.

They are seeking compensatory, general and special, and punitive damages, and are requesting a jury trial.

The case is Plaintiffs I, Plaintiffs II, Plaintiff III et al v. Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Indianapolis, Inc., Roman Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Bishop Luers High School, Inc.et al, 49D03-2501-CT-003302.