Instead of helping, administrators at a Brooklyn Catholic school sicced child-welfare investigators on the family of a 13-year-old boy who then killed himself after complaining that classmates bullied him, his distraught parents said.
Danny Fitzpatrick’s family charges that sending the Administration for Children’s Services to their home was the wrong call by officials at Holy Angels Catholic Academy.
Instead, they said, the school should have stopped the bullying that led Danny to hang himself with a belt in the family’s attic. His older sister found him dead late Thursday.
“They called ACS on us,” in November 2015, mom Maureen said of administrators at the Bay Ridge school, fighting back tears as she sat at a kitchen table covered with family photos.
“Danny told us they [administrators] were asking questions: ‘Do Mom and Dad drink? Do they feed you? Do they have clothes in the house?’ ” the mom said.
“Next thing you know, 7:30 at night, I have an ACS officer at my door, and my son told him, ‘I just want a friend.’”
The parents agreed to drug testing and to a thorough investigation, which ultimately turned up nothing, they said.