The video of the alleged attack is brutal. Four teenagers punch, kick, and drag 14-year-old Naomi Johnson by her hair during a sleepover, while another records the assault on a smartphone.
The 10-minute video is now the basis of a new lawsuit filed by Johnson’s father against a mother who allegedly hosted the sleepover.
According to Wayne Johnson’s suit, Deanna Kirgis was at her Anchorage, Alaska, home while her daughter and her daughter’s friends allegedly assaulted Naomi in the garage. Not only did Kirgis fail to intervene, Wayne Johnson says, but she also provided the underage girls with alcohol before the attack.
Wayne Johnson is suing Kirgis for $100,000 in damages, costs he says his family incurred after paying Naomi’s sizable medical bills and pulling her out of high school after the alleged assault.
“Things are just different now,” Naomi told Your Alaska Link. “I don’t go to school. I don’t hang out with my other friends.”
Naomi’s parents are now homeschooling her after her public school refused to suspend the girls involved in the alleged attack—even after one of the girls allegedly threatened to stab Naomi the next time she saw her, according to the lawsuit.
Law enforcement has also been slow to issue punishments. In the four months since the video was released, the Anchorage Police Department has not issued any charges against the alleged attackers.
“The incident was first reported to APD on July 26, 2015, and an investigation was initiated,” police said in a statement on Nov. 30. “The video of the incident was received by police approximately two weeks after the initial report. This incident has been investigated and final reports are being sent to the Division of Juvenile Justice (DJJ).”
Police say they will not release the names of the investigation’s subjects “because they are juveniles”—an indication that police are not investigating Kirgis’s alleged involvement in the attack.
For her part, Kirgis “admits a slumber party for a small number of 14 to 15 year old girls occurred at her home on 7/26/15,” her lawyer wrote in a response to Johnson’s lawsuit. Kirgis denied the other accusations leveled at her, including that she failed to intervene in the alleged beating, and that she provided the teenagers with alcohol.
This may not be the first time Kirgis has been accused of placing a child at risk.
A Deanna Kirgis from the same town was arrested for driving under the influence and endangering the welfare of a minor in 2009, police records show. Her biography has been removed from the “Our Team” page on her employer’s website, where it was listed until at least October of this year. Kirgis did not respond to an email sent to her work address.
Social media profiles for the girls allegedly involved in the attack have also gone dark. After a December Facebook post claimed to name the attackers, the accused girls changed their Twitter handles or set their accounts to private.
Their video, meanwhile, remains online, reuploaded by a number of news outlets. The alleged attackers look like children, dressed in pink hoodies, Ugg boots, and bedazzled jeans. They laugh as they stomp on Johnson’s face and stomach. The video goes on and on, and no one ever intervenes.
