ICYMI: Upper West Side School Fires Program After Student Is Sexually Abused

UPPER WEST SIDE, NY — An Upper West Side private school has fired a company that ran its after-school program after an after-school instructor was arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a 9-year-old student, according to news reports.

Editor's note: Had a busy workweek? Check out one of the Upper West Side's top stories from this week, just in case you missed it.

Channing Parker, 22, is facing charges of predatory sexual assault against a child, sex abuse and criminal sexual act for a child under 13-years-old, according to court records. Parker allegedly lured a 9-year-old female student at the IDEAL School of Manhattan into a bathroom after a basketball lesson and forced her to perform sexual acts on him, the Daily News reported.

Parker was arrested after the child told her mother about the abuse and the mother alerted the police, according to the report.

The IDEAL School has since cut ties with Kids Creative, a nonprofit that organizes after-school programming at 25 schools in New York City and the company that employed Parker, the Daily News reported.

“On Friday, The IDEAL School became aware of a serious incident allegedly perpetrated against one of our students on Friday afternoon by an individual working for an outside provider of after school services, Kids Creative, who was using our space,” a spokesman for IDEAL said in a statement sent to the Daily News.

The abuse of the 9-year-old student is the second case involving a student of the IDEAL school in the past week. On Friday, a school bus driver was arrested after punching a male student of the IDEAL school in the face, police told Patch.

Michael Bradley, 52, has been charged with assault, act in a manner injurious to a child and aggravated unlicensed operator, an NYPD spokesman said. While driving a school bus on Friday, Bradley stopped at a red light and called a male child up to the front of the bus, police told Patch. When the child approached the the front of the bus Bradley put him in a headlock and punched him in the nose causing pain and bleeding, police said.

A spokesman from the IDEAL school told Patch that the driver of the bus was not an employee of the school. Bussing arrangements for students at the IDEAL school were contracted by school families through the Friendly Bus Company — a third party — the spokesman said.

Channing Parker is currently being held on $100,000 bail and is due in court again on March 17, according to court records.

Read the full Daily News story here.

Photo by Patch