Lawsuit names Lacey school officials, football coaches in case of “harassment and retaliation“

LACEY - A student and their parents have filed suit against the Lacey Township School District in Ocean County Superior Court, making a litany of allegations against head football coach Lou Vircillo, his assistant coaches and school district leadership in connection with their handling of alleged harassment and violations of the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination (LAD) based on the student's medical disabilities dating back to the student's freshman year in 2020.

The minor student, identified only by initials "A.G." in court filings along with their parents from Forked River filed a complaint earlier this summer on June 27th. The Board of Education has yet to file a formal response to the lawsuit in court. The Board's current general counsel is Bruce W. Padula of the Matawan firm Cleary, Giacobbe Alfieri & Jacobs.

The complaint, which is also seeking punitive damages, misspelled the name of longtime Lacey Township High School football head coach Lou Vircillo, who has been highly regarded for his role in leading the team to past victories.

According to documents filed in court, the harassment has left the student  in a "constant and debilitating state of anxiety and fear" and that the student "feels completely helpless under the authority of Coach [sic] Vercillo."

At the center of the legal case is an alleged course of conduct consisting of "discrimination, harassment, and retaliation" they claim was perpetrated by Coach Vircillo, Assistant Coach Jack Bush, and Assistant Coach Shane Allen, "all of whom were on notice of A.G.'s medical disabilities."

Starting in August, 2020, the student, who is clinically obese, claims they were  berated by Bush, whose LinkedIn profile lists him as a resident of Lavallette, over their body weight in front of their team mates while being made to line up and step on a scale. Other "unwanted comments" from the assistant coach about the students weight continued during the 2020 season.

By the student's sophomore year in 2021, the alleged comments from Bush, who recently received an award for his coaching going back to 1968, became more "aggressive and demeaning."

"Look at you, lose weight" and, "look at how fat you got," the complaint recounted. The student and family subsequently contacted several other assistant football coaches in an attempt to separate their son from Bush, but the abusive comments continued in late September of that year, with additional displays of "outward hostility" according to the complaint:

"Man you got fat; what have you been doing? You need to lose weight."

Vircillo spoke with the student about their concerns in October, 2021, according to the complaint, and allegedly was upset that the student didn't first bring his concerns to his attention. Vircillo is said to have further suggested that he did not believe that Bush was being "purposefully mean."

The same week, Bush allegedly drove up to the student and yelled out of his pickup truck to "[sic] loose weight," which prompted additional complaints to Coach Vircillo, district Athletic Director Aimee Del Vento Evans and Principal Greg Brandis, resulting in the opening of a formal Harassment Intimidation and Bullying (HIB) investigation against Bush. Vircillo is said to have told the student's father in a text message that Bush "...would no longer be attending practices and would only be filming games from the box."

But the student and parents were later dismayed to see Bush back on the field, and learned that he was still present at practice despite apparent representations from Vircillo and Brandis to the contrary.

To remedy their complaint, the student “…wants to be free from further discriminatory verbal abuse from Coach Bush who remains a fixture at the Lacey Township High School Athletics, and to be free from the direct retaliation he was subjected to by, inter alia, Coach [sic] Vercillo and Coach Allen.”

The allegations against Vircillo, Bush and the football team come as the Lacey Board of Education seeks to dedicate the township high school's football field in his honor.

A ceremony is planned for Friday August 26th, 2022 at 6pm at the Lacey Township High School football field in honor of Vircillo. The field will be formally renamed to "Vircillo Stadium," according to school district officials.

"Throughout his 42 years he has shown unbelievable commitment and dedication like no other," the district's superintendent, Dr. Vanessa Perreira (formerly Clark) said at the August 18th, 2022 board meeting.

A.G.'s lawsuit further alleges that the Lacey Township Board of Education’s policymaking failures related to harassment contributed to the problem, claiming that the board's failure to adopt & enforce policies relative to the conduct at issue in the case allowed the harassing behavior to continue unabated.

“The Defendant Board is further responsible for the harassment because it failed to reasonably promulgate and enforce a policy prohibiting the same and because members of the staff were willfully indifferent to the harassment,” the complaint stated.

“The Defendant Board is further liable in this matter because members of the school district staff were notified of the harassment and failed to take prompt and effective remedial measures to correct the harassment. The individual Defendants ignored reports and complaints of continuous abusive conduct and retaliation in blatant disregard of their obligations and responsibilities to A.G.”

Also at issue was the Board's consideration of the HIB complaint and findings during the November 18th, 2021 closed session. In response to concerns raised by the student's mother in the meeting's public comment portion, the board "...gave conflicting statements as to what she was entitled to regarding the HIB findings, how to get the findings, and the time frame in within which they needed to provide the findings to D.S.G."

Despite all of this, the student and their parents claim to this day that they have not been told by district officials what, if anything has been done to resolve their allegations against Bush.

It is important to note that none of these allegations have been proven or disproven yet in court. School districts, like many other public and private entities do not typically comment on pending litigation. If we receive a statement from district officials, this story will be updated.

The next step of this lawsuit will likely either involve the filing of a motion to dismiss - which would result in the complaint being thrown out without a trial - or the filing of a formal answer, which would initiate what would likely become a lengthy discovery process and possible settlement negotiations.