A bronze statue of Lady Justice holding scales is displayed indoors.
READING, Pa. – Female students and their parents are suing a private school in Pennsylvania where AI-created nude photos were circulated starting in November 2023.
Officials at Lancaster Country Day School are accused of an “extended, catastrophic institutional failure” in a federal lawsuit filed June 15. The two perpetrators used AI to put faces taken from social media and elsewhere onto pornographic images, with at least 59 girls as subjects, the suit says.
For months, the school “actively obstructed the investigation,” the suit says, claiming at one point the assistant head of the Upper School told parents “boys will be boys.”
“The victims’ suffering is profound and ongoing,” the suit says. “Among other things, they have suffered anxiety and panic attacks, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, an inability to focus on schoolwork, loss of trust, a persistent fear that the images may resurface in ways beyond their control, and physical manifestations of this emotional distress.”
In November 2023, an anonymous tip was sent to the Safe2Say system, but no report by LCDS was ever sent to ChildLine or the Manheim Township Police Department, the suit says. Instead, the school opted for an internal investigation the suit calls “wholly inadequate.”
That probe involved asking the accused student about the photos, plaintiffs claim. The student denied the allegations, which let the deepfake images continue through May 2024.
Finally, Manheim’s police department was contacted by a concerned parent. The photos were spread on Discord, and in late 2024 police showed them to the victims for the first time. The two boys, 14 years old each at the time the photos were made, pleaded guilty to 59 felony counts of sexual abuse of children and criminal conspiracy in March 2025 and received probation.
Those two are sued in addition to LCDS and staff, as are the unknown AI companies that created the photos.
Nadeem Bezar and other attorneys at Kline & Specter represent the plaintiffs.
