Attorney Phillip Ignelzi from the Pittsburgh law firm Ogg Cordes Murphy & Ignelzi said he represents two Upper St. Clair families and will likely file suit against the district within 30 to 60 days. The firm specializes in personal injury, medical malpractice and employment law.

Ignelzi declined to discuss the specifics of the suit before it is filed.

The suit would bring the total to three township families who filed or will file suit over alleged rapes and sexual assault over a reported five-month period at the high school.

The boy accused of the felonies was 14 at the time they occurred. He was to have a hearing before Allegheny County Common Pleas Court Judge John McVay on June 23. Sources close to the district said that hearing was postponed until late August. The outcome of the hearing will not impact the suit in U.S. Civil Court, where attorneys for the families plan to present evidence they believe will show the district was negligent in reporting the alleged crimes to police as early as December 2007.

Township police in a Feb. 28 memorandum said they were not informed of the assaults until early February 2008. It was at this time one of the girls confided to her parents, who then called law enforcement.

"In the course of the sexual assaults investigation, police learned that two females filed complaints with the school district in January of this year against the same male," the Feb. 28 report states. "In the one girl's case, the male had grabbed her buttocks for an extended period of time and once came up behind her and put his hands across her breasts. Additional charges have been filed."

The contents of the memo were publicized by the media in early March. The school district did not publicly dispute the reports at that time.

School district solicitor Ted Brooks said July 8, however, that the district did report an incident to township police when it was reported to school administrators in January 2008.

"An incident, as it was reported to us, was reported to police in January," Brooks said.

The alleged victims and suspect are all in the district's special needs program. Not all have the same IEP (individualized education program), however.

The attorney who filed suit on June 30, David Barton, said US District Court Judge Gary L. Lancaster was assigned to the case, and the proceedings will be open to the public. He said depositions will begin shortly after the dispute resolution process ends.

In federal court, those who file suit must submit to an alternative dispute resolution process, with the aim of settling rather than proceeding to trial.

"There are three options for ADR--mediation, binding arbitration and early neutral evaluation," Barton said. "It could get resolved before going to court. Provided it does not, I would expect a trial sometime in early 2009. Depositions and early discovery will begin in that early phase."

State and federal laws require school districts to involve local law enforcement when they become aware of a credible safety risk involving students and threat of bodily injury.

"Our case contends that teachers and administrators took action to suppress the fact that assaults were occurring. From all the facts we know so far, there was severe and pervasive student on student harassment, and the district was deliberate and indifferent," Barton said.

Brooks said that isn't true. "We dispute any notion of deliberate and indifferent. There was no cover up here at all. Parents were informed," Brooks said.

District surveillance video allegedly shows the girl being forcibly dragged from a girls rest room and into a stairwell on Feb. 4, where she was assaulted. A bloody handprint on the wall remained for days after the attacks. The suit said the other girls were assaulted and raped on that stairwell.

Since Feb. 4, sources indicate there might be up to eight girls who told police they were either raped, assaulted or harassed by a 14-year-old male both on and off school property.

The 14-year-old male was first charged Feb. 7 by Upper St. Clair Township police with five counts of rape involving two girls.

On Feb. 12, additional charges involving two more girls were filed by the police. Those charges included a single charge of rape, terroristic threats, aggravated assault and indecent assault on one victim and one count of aggravated indecent assault, two counts of simple assault and three counts of terroristic threats on a second.

Unknown charges were filed allegedly involving two additional girls in early March.