Trans student faced sexual harassment before assault and bite attack that left Maine girl concussed and visually impaired

The transgender Maine high school student who attacked a high school girl on Friday was the subject of sexual harassment complaints at another Maine school, just months before a video surfaced showing him assaulting a classmate in front of the Mount Desert Island High School in Bar Harbor was brutally attacked.

The video, one of two showing the violent attack, did not capture the entire altercation or the animalistic brutality of the attack on the smaller student, who spoke to Maine Wire along with her parents on condition of anonymity.

According to the victim and her parents, the attacker – a biological male who has identified as a female for several years – hit the victim on the head with a steel water jug, growled as she pinned her to the sidewalk, and gnawed on her eye, before grabbing her by her hair and slamming her head into the concrete.

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An additional, unreleased video obtained by Maine Wire, along with the first video, confirms that John Cardillo straddled her, bit her and tried to pull out her hair.

“He attacks her with full force, sits on her and pushes her down,” the mother told Maine Wire. “So she’s not even able to defend herself in any way because he’s bigger, heavier and about 6 feet tall,” she said. “And then he starts biting her eye and, my daughter said, while he was chewing on her eye, he growled.”

“He grabs a handful of hair and throws her head off the sidewalk,” she said. “Meanwhile, the principal is sitting next to the teachers.”

“What is your intention when you smash someone’s head off the pavement with this force?” Your only intention is probably to kill this person,” she said.

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The attacker, who Maine Wire is not naming because he is also a minor, had recently started injecting himself with estrogen as part of hormone replacement therapy, according to his Instagram profile.

“The whole time she’s just screaming for help, crying and screaming, ‘Help!’ And no one helped her,” said the victim’s mother.

“The principal sat there and yelled at them instead of helping. And [her daughter] said, “Mom, I really thought I was going to die.” I thought that was it. I thought I’d never see you again.’ And that’s probably the hardest thing to hear,” the mother said.

“This really haunts me,” she said.

Mount Desert Island High School Principal Matthew K. Haney did not respond to a call seeking comment about the attack.

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After Maine Wire reached out to Haney for comment, his X social media account was deleted.

In the videos, a male voice can be heard instructing the attacker to let go of his victim’s hair. The videos show the male student walking away after the attack ends, while his victim remains screaming on the sidewalk.

The victim and the attacker have known each other since they attended elementary school together. Both students previously attended public school in Ellsworth – 20 miles from Bar Harbor – before moving to high school on Mount Desert Island, an island community in Maine typically known for its luxury coastal villas and busy tourist traps.

According to the parents, the altercation stemmed from previous comments on social media involving the attacker and a friend of the victim. Although Maine Wire was unable to find the comments in question, the victim’s parents admitted that their daughter made aggressive comments toward her attacker in defense of a friend.

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All three students regularly rode the same school bus together, but when the young man got on the bus Friday morning, he made his way to the victim’s girlfriend and began attacking her, according to the victim’s mother.

“There was no warning,” the mother said. “He just jumped on the bus straight away and went right after her.”

That’s when the girl seen in the original viral video began physically intervening to defend her friend.

At this point the bus was about 20 minutes from the high school.

The bus driver, “Bob,” managed to separate the students and radio the school so that help would be available when he arrived.

The video camera on the school bus captured the altercation; However, none of these videos were published.

When the bus finally arrived at MDI HS, Haney was waiting on the sidewalk. The two students who had been separated by the bus driver at the front of the bus got out of the vehicle first.

As she exited the bus, Haney said something to the young girl, causing her to turn around, walk toward the principal and begin yelling at him about the lack of protection for her friend.

As she approached Haney, the student got off the bus and was able to grab the student, sparking the physical altercation captured in the viral video that was shared widely Tuesday. Video of the attack, first posted online by media personality John Cardillo and soon picked up by TikTok’s Libs, garnered tens of millions of views.

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In the video, Haney can be seen wearing a green jacket, standing next to the fighting students, almost like a referee watching a wrestling match. According to the victim’s parents, it was only the bus driver’s behavior that prevented the attack from causing more damage or perhaps even killing their daughter.

“If it wasn’t for that bus driver, he could have taken action [the male student’s] Hand, and that’s probably the only reason my daughter is alive right now,” the mother said.

The parents said that to the best of their knowledge, the bus driver, whom they knew only as “Bob,” was a retired former police officer who is now under investigation by the school district for intervening to stop the assault.

The attacker was temporarily suspended from school, but so was his victim.

The victims’ parents said they are prepared to exhaust every legal means available to hold the attacker, the school district and Haney accountable for the actions – and inactions – that left their daughter with a concussion and vision damage.

Haney, who has also worked as an athletic director and athletic trainer, has been principal of MDI High School in Bar Harbor for 12 years and was previously an assistant principal at the school for eight years after previously teaching and coaching at public schools in Old Town and Sumner .

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Since the attack, the girl has had two medical consultations and will soon have a CAT scan of her skull to determine whether a fracture of the orbital bone is the cause of the temporary blurring and loss of vision she is suffering.

Photos shared with the Maine Wire show extensive bruising around the girl’s right eye and tears on her scalp, where several clumps of hair were torn from her head during the attack.

According to parents and local media reports, this was not the first time the transgender student caused trouble for other students in the Maine public school system.

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The student previously attended Ellsworth High School, where administrators allowed him to use the girl’s bathroom because he claimed he was a woman.

In February, the boy’s behavior while using the girls’ restrooms — which reportedly included staring at girls, taking cellphone photos of other students in the restrooms and even masturbating — prompted about 20 Ellsworth High School students to stage a protest.

The student protesters, who included the victim of Friday’s attack, held signs that read, “I shouldn’t be afraid to go to the bathroom,” “Protect our bodies” and “No more peeking through the door.” .

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According to a news report in the Ellsworth American, school administrators were hostile toward the protesting students, made no changes to school policies and claimed that the school’s investigation found no evidence that the alleged misconduct ever occurred.

According to Ellsworth American, the school even threatened any students who recorded the protest with suspension.

A review of the attacker’s social media posts leading up to the attack found dozens of posts about gender reassignment and gender ideology, reflections on self-harm and suicidal thoughts, and frustration with his classmates.

In a series of posts, the student said she had started estrogen hormone replacement therapy, a controversial medical treatment sometimes prescribed to people with gender dysphoria.

Although the treatments are becoming increasingly popular in progressive states like Maine, European countries and many conservative U.S. states are increasingly discouraging treatment of minors in favor of psychotherapy.

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In July 2023, Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) signed a law allowing 16- and 17-year-olds to receive sex-reassignment drugs — like the estrogen shots the attacker referenced in Instagram posts — without the consent of the state to receive parents.

A previous order from Governor Mills changed Maine’s Medicaid billing practices to allow sex reassignment treatments to be covered under Medicaid, a taxpayer-funded medical welfare program for the poor and needy.

The result is that 16- and 17-year-olds in Maine can now, in some cases, receive taxpayer-funded gender reassignment drugs without their parents’ knowledge or consent.

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Although the victim’s parents are just beginning to consider their legal options, they have considered filing a lawsuit against the pharmaceutical companies because they do not believe it is a coincidence that the attack occurred just weeks after the young man began experimental hormone replacement therapy took place.

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The parents are in contact with local police and have applied for a protection from abuse order; However, the situation is complicated by the fact that the two minors live close to each other and share a school bus and attend the same school.

The mother said that in addition to the physical injuries she suffered, her daughter is also suffering emotionally and has been extremely afraid of being alone since the attack and has expressed fear for her safety if she goes to MDI High School should return.

“I’m fucking tearing myself apart,” the mother said.

“I couldn’t imagine, you know, we, we send our kids to school hoping that of course something like this would never happen, but that if I did, that anyone, anyone, any of this shit would happen. Trained teachers go through all this damn training for what? “To not use them?” she said.

The Maine Wire was unable to contact the attacker’s parents or guardians.

This story will be updated as MDI High School administrators respond to our inquiries.