12-year-old accused of hate crime after 2 Muslim students attacked at Connecticut school
A 12-year-old Connecticut student who police say assaulted two of her Muslim classmates has been accused of a hate crime in the attack.
Four seventh-grade students were involved in an altercation at Wallace Middle School in Waterbury, Connecticut, earlier this month, and two 13-year-old Muslim girls were injured, police said.
The injured teens regularly wear hijabs, the Connecticut chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CT) has said. Their relatives called for an investigation into the attack, arguing that the teens may have been targeted because of their religion, police said.
Waterbury Police on Friday said in a statement that authorities determined "the altercation was motivated by religion and/or ethnicity."
The 12-year-old was charged in juvenile court with intimidation based on bigotry and bias in the first and second degree, authorities said. A second student has been referred to a youth diversionary program rather than being arrested, police said.
Waterbury Mayor Paul Pernerewski said the attack, which happened March 3, was an 'isolated incident,' and interim Superintendent of Waterbury Public SchoolsDarren Schwartz said the attack did not represent a bigger issue within the school.
'While this was not part of a widespread problem, this is an opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to ensure our students are safe and respectful of one another,' he said in a statement.
CAIR-CT called the attack 'unacceptable.'
'Schools must be safe spaces for all students, regardless of their religion or ethnicity,' Farhan Memon, chair of CAIR-CT, said in a statement. 'What reportedly happened to these two girls is unacceptable, and the district has a legal and moral obligation to take decisive action to prevent further harm.'
Memon has called on the school district to implement mandatory schoolwide anti-bullying training focused on racial and religious discrimination.
'This attack on Muslim students is unacceptable and reflects a broader pattern of bullying and discrimination that must be urgently addressed,' Memon said in a statement.
Officials said Friday that the Waterbury Department of Education recognized the attack as bullying, has taken disciplinary action and implemented enhanced school safety measures.
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The Herald Scotland
a day ago
- The Herald Scotland
Mohamed Soliman's antisemitic attack deepens divisions in Boulder
They ignore the taunts and epithets flung by college students and counter-protesters, focusing on their goal: Bring them home. These moments, these footsteps, they weren't political. It wasn't about their personal views on Israel's war against Hamas. "We just want them home," said longtime marcher Lisa Turnquist, 66. "That's why we do this," she said. The small group of "Run for their Lives" marchers in this college town were sharing their message on June 1 - 603 days since Hamas snatched concertgoers and ordinary people from southern Israel and vanished them into Gaza's tunnels. But halfway through the Sunday afternoon march, a suicidal Muslim immigrant attacked them with a flamethrower and Molotov cocktails, injuring 12, including an elderly Holocaust survivor. Many regular marchers of the group are Jewish. Six of the injured in what federal officials have described as a terror attack were from the same synagogue, Bonai Shalom. But instead of bringing the community together, the attack appears to have further exacerbated existing fault lines across this wealthy, liberal city where pro-Palestinian protests verging on outright antisemitism have become a way of life for elected leaders and college students. After the attack, someone posted "Wanted" signs on the Pearl Street Mall just steps from the scene, naming the majority of city council members as guilty of "complicity in genocide" for refusing to pass a ceasefire resolution and not divesting from businesses that are helping Israel wage its war against Hamas. "Not only has the rhetoric become increasingly centered around violence and division but we have an increasing amount of cowardice, from cowardly administrators, cowardly government officials," said Adam Rovner, who directs the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Denver. "We're seeing it much more clearly now. And unfortunately Jewish communities are paying the cost." Egyptian national Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, faces more than 118 state and federal charges in connection with the attack, including hate-crime accusations. Investigators say he confessed and remains unrepentant, telling them he deliberately targeted the marchers because he considered them a "Zionist Group." Divisions continue after Pearl Street attack Amid the extreme positions on the Israel-Hamas war, Run for their Lives believed most people could get behind their message. The national Run for their Lives organization has sponsored walks or runs in hundreds of cities and towns since Oct. 7, 2023, the day of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust in which over 1,000 people were killed and 240 were taken hostage. As of June 5, 56 hostages are still being held by Hamas, although that number includes both the living and presumed dead. On June 1, as she had dozens of times in the past, Turnquist was pushing her Australian shepherd Jake in a stroller as the group made its way past the historic Boulder County Courthouse on Pearl Street pedestrian mall. She saw a man dressed like a landscaper - odd, she thought, since it was a Sunday - and thought it would be best to just keep walking, as she had done so many times before when counter-protesters screamed and yelled. There had never been physical violence against the group, but there were insults, jeers, accusations that the marchers themselves support genocide. Turnquist and others who have marched said they often felt unsafe. "We ignore the people who are against us," said Turnquist, who is Jewish. "We can't let Boulder tell us what to do. We can't let university students tell us we can't do stuff like this, because that's what they do. Week after week, people are yelling at us all the time, saying we are causing genocide. We're not causing genocide. We were attacked and we are fighting to get our hostages back." The conflict between the marchers and counter-protesters is a microcosm of the vicious disputes that have long been on display in Boulder, where Palestinian students disrupted classes earlier this year. Turnquist, the protest marcher, said knowing the group lacked the full support of local elected officials made it harder to feel comfortable during those Sunday protests. She said she went into a Boulder shop at the start of the Gaza war while wearing a necklace with a Jewish symbol on it. The shopkeeper suggested she hide it, so she didn't become a target, she said. "One of the things I remember saying was ... the masks are going to come off and we're going to see who the antisemites are. We're going to see them for who they are. And sure enough it started happening all over," Turnquist said. "It was people that I didn't even think would be antisemites - it was some friends." Nationally, polls have shown that younger Americans are more likely to side with Palestinians than with Israel, including young Jews. And an April 2024 poll by the Pew Research Center found that 31% of Jews younger than 35 felt Hamas' reasons for fighting were valid, compared to just 10% for Jews aged 35 and older. Turnquist said the Sunday marches were deliberately non-political: They didn't call for attacks on Hamas or for more retaliation by Israel. Instead, they focused on the one thing they thought everyone would agree with. To Soliman, that apparently didn't matter. According to investigators, he researched the protest group online, took concealed-weapons classes and planned his attack for a year. Video recordings of the attack captured Soliman shouting "Free Palestine" as he threw Molotov cocktails into the crowd of marchers, setting fire to several victims, including an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor. "Mohamed said it was revenge as the Zionist group did not care about thousands of hostages from Palestine," Boulder police wrote in an arrest affidavit. "Mohamed said this had nothing to do with the Jewish community and was specific in the Zionist group supporting the killings of people on his land (Palestine)." Soliman's motivation, as reported by police, mirrored similar language used by the sole member of the Boulder City Council who declined to sign onto a group statement from city leaders condemning the attack. Councilmember Taishya Adams condemned the attack but said she declined to sign the group statement, which identified Soliman's actions as antisemitic, because it didn't specifically note that he was also motivated by what she considers anti-Zionism. "If we are to prevent future violence and additional attacks in our community, I believe we need to be real about the possible motivations for this heinous act," Adams wrote in a statement explaining her decision. "Denying our community the full truth about the attack denies us the ability to fully protect ourselves and each other." Responded Councilmember Mark Wallach: "Your efforts to make what I think is a pedantic distinction as to whether a man who attempted to burn peaceful elderly demonstrators alive - to burn them alive, Taishya - was acting as an antisemite or an anti-Zionist is simply grotesque." Jewish groups in Boulder have previously tangled with Adams over what they say are her own antisemitic remarks regarding Palestine, and pro-Palestinian protesters repeatedly disrupted city council meetings. Adams did not return a request for comment from USA TODAY. On June 5, the first meeting after the attack, the mayor announced that in-person public comment would be prohibited because pro-Palestinian protesters have so often disrupted meetings. Among those who have watched protesters disrupt council meetings was Barbara Steinmetz, a Holocaust survivor burned in the June 1 attack. In a video interview last year, Steinmetz recounted what it was like to attend council meetings alongside pro-Palestinian protesters, including one interaction with a woman carrying a sign referencing "from the river to the sea," the rallying cry of the Palestine Liberation Organization, which called for erasing Israel. "I turned to her and said, 'Do you realize that that means you want to kill me? You want me destroyed?' But she just turned away," Steinmetz said. "Jews in Boulder and maybe Denver and probably in cities all around the world, are afraid of wearing their Jewish stars. They're taking down their mezuzahs so that no one will know that it's a Jewish house. They're not identifying themselves because they're frightened." Soliman's attack didn't happen in a vacuum Rovner, from the University of Denver, said pro-Palestinian college protests helped lay the groundwork for increased violence, in part because many students don't truly appreciate what it means to repeat and thus desensitize the meaning of chants like "globalize the intifada" and declarations that Palestine should run "from the river to the sea." Says the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs: "Calls to 'globalize the intifada' are not calls for civil disobedience, general strikes, or negotiations. They are calls for the murder of Israelis and Jews around the world and must be taken seriously by governments and law enforcement agencies." Like CU-Boulder, the University of Denver was home to an encampment of pro-Palestinian protesters last year, and Rovner said there were repeated confrontations between the protesters and Jewish students walking to class. Rovner has a close friend who often participated in the Boulder walks. "These are precisely the kinds of things that cause terrorist groups to pick up weapons to attack people," Rovner said. "When you heighten the rhetoric of hatred and demonize one country and claim to only be opposing an ideology, you are almost inevitably going to see action based on that rhetoric." Jewish scholars and community leaders say the attack on Boulder was frustratingly predictable given the sharp rise in antisemitism sparked by the war in Gaza, with escalating rhetoric, protests and demonstrations nationwide, particularly on college campus and college towns. In response to those warnings, President Donald Trump specifically targeted pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses, launching investigations into 40 campuses that his administration has accused of not doing enough to protect the Jewish community from participants. Security and extremism experts say a significant factor in driving violence is that many protesters draw no distinction between someone who is Jewish and someone who supports Israel's attacks on Hamas in Gaza, which is home to about 2.1 million Palestinians. In April, a man firebombed Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro's house hours after a Passover celebration, telling police he targeted Shapiro over "what he wants to do to the Palestinian people." And on May 22, a man shot and killed a young couple outside the Lillian & Albert Small Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. "Free Palestine," the man shouted. "I did it for Gaza," he later told investigators. "These attacks and many more in recent months - on campus, at Jewish institutions and this time at a peaceful gathering here in Boulder - have targeted people whose only 'offense' is that they are Jewish. Or someone thought they were Jewish. Or they were standing as allies alongside Jews," the Rocky Mountain Anti-Defamation League said in a statement to USA TODAY. A report released last month found that antisemitic incidents across the United States in 2024 hit a record high for the fourth consecutive year. The FBI and Department of Homeland Security on June 5 issued a security alert warning that more antisemitic violence could be coming. "The ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict may motivate other violent extremists and hate crime perpetrators with similar grievances to conduct violence against Jewish and Israeli communities and their supporters," the security agencies said in the warning. "Foreign terrorist organizations also may try to exploit narratives related to the conflict to inspire attacks in the United States." Survivor returns to site of the attack Run for their Lives organizers say they remain undeterred as they gear up for this weekend's march. "This didn't happen in a vacuum. It is the result of increasingly normalized hate, dehumanizing rhetoric, and silence in the face of rising antisemitism. But we will not be deterred," Rachel Amaru, the founder of Boulder Run For Their Lives said at a June 4 rally for the victims. "We invite everyone to join us, not just with your feet, but with open hearts and minds. Choose humanity over hate, curiosity over judgment, and learning over condemnation." The day after the attack, Turnquist returned to the scene of the attack to lay flowers and display a small Israeli flag on behalf of her injured friends. Still shaken by the attack just 24 hours earlier, she visibly shook as she recounted her efforts to help the victims. "I woke up this morning and didn't want to get out of bed. I didn't want to get out of bed and didn't want to talk to my friends who were calling me. But this is when we have to get up and stand up, and we have to push back," Turnquist said. And she promised to be back walking every Sunday until all the hostages are home.
Scotsman
2 days ago
- Scotsman
A Refugee's Tale as told to Nobel Prize winner Abdulrazak Gurnah: Eight years on the edge of hell
This article contains affiliate links. We may earn a small commission on items purchased through this article, but that does not affect our editorial judgement. Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... I came by air. It may sound odd to say that – what other way then? Some people walked. Many drowned. They were desperate. I wasn't desperate but I was very frightened because I had made some people very angry with me. My crime was to tell the girls who attended my Sunday school that they should not agree to be circumcised. My Sunday school was supposed to be a reading and writing class but I slipped in the good word any how I could. I told them circumcision was genital mutilation and a barbaric and backward practice. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Men forced women to do it so they would know they were rubbish. The real intention was to hurt them and paralyse them and control them. When the day came for the girls to agree to the cut, six of them refused. I wasn't there, but I discovered what had happened that same night when I heard angry voices outside my house, bidding me to come out and take a beating for interfering with their daughters. It was a Muslim village in a Muslim country, and though I am a countryman, I'm a Christian who was now accused of interfering with their daughters. You can imagine my terror. 'At Lunar House a woman interviewed me, and wrote down all my details' (Picture: Scott Barbour) | Getty Images When it quietened down outside and the angry people went away, perhaps to get more people to come and help them, I wheeled out my bicycle in the dark and rode away to safety in a nearby village. The next day I heard that the thatch of my house was set on fire that night and that the people who did it were still looking for me and talking bad, so I ran away to the city, to the office of the charity NGO I worked for. The officer there was an Englishman, Bernard, he was my friend. He told me he would find out about the fire. A few days later he told me that the people who burnt down my house came to look for me at the office, and they said they had some unfinished business with me... These bad people went back to the office several times looking for me, and in the end Bernard suggested that I run away to Britain to seek asylum. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad It is a Christian country, and you are a Christian worker persecuted for doing Christian labour, Bernard said. He knew I would be given sanctuary, he said. *** At Lunar House a woman interviewed me, and wrote down all my details. I told her that I was a campaigner against female genital mutilation and my life was in danger in my home country. Yes, she said, I am going to assign you emergency initial accommodation, just sit there and wait now. By the end of the day there were six of us waiting there and we were all put in a van and taken to Barry House. There were 12 of us there, and we could go out if we wanted... We told each other stories of our escape from danger and death. Then three of us were sent to live in a house in Newcastle where we stayed for a month. Then after that I was given a flat in Glasgow and three weeks' money, and all this time I was still waiting to be interviewed so that I could explain my need for sanctuary. I was eager for my interview because I knew that the officer would understand and sympathise with my reasons for coming here. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad After one month in Glasgow I was called for interview. I was interviewed for five hours by three different people. All of them were calm and persistent, but I could tell from the way they asked me questions that there was something behind it. They did not believe me and as the hours passed I began to think what I had not thought possible over the three months I had been waiting. They did not want me here. They did not like me. The result of the interview was that I was refused permission to stay. I felt as if I was something broken and discarded, thrown away with other broken things. I could not get over the stubborn and unruffled hostility of the officers. Perhaps you knew all along it was going to turn out like this, but I did not expect it. I really thought I would be heard differently. After two years my application at last was successful, but permission to stay did not mean the end of my arriver's tale. I was not allowed to work. My allowance, which was loaded onto an electronic card, only allowed me to shop in certain shops and for certain things. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad In the end I took a job working illegally a few hours a week in a motor parts shop, just for pocket money. I don't know how the police found out, but they raided my flat at four in the morning, overturned everything they could overturn and took me away hurriedly as if I was a dangerous criminal. All my papers and all my property were lost during the arrest because I was not allowed to go back and was held away out of sight as if I was a poisonous snake or an infectious animal for several months. I was released only to return to the limbo I was in before. I am not allowed to work. I have now been here for eight years. I have no choice but to live where I am told to live and wait for the next hearing to allow my application to be considered. Do you know what limbo means? It means the edge of hell.
NBC News
2 days ago
- NBC News
These former college athletes were told a coach may have hacked into their private photos
Volleyball has been a source of joy for Aly Torline, shaping her from a kid in club leagues to collegiate athlete. The 30-year-old 'can't say enough good things' about her experience at the California State University in San Bernardino. She was recognized as an all-American by a national coaching organization and said the relationships with her teammates and coaches helped shape her into the woman she is today. For more on this story, watch 'NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas' tonight at 6:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. CT. But nearly 10 years after graduation, Torline received a notice from federal authorities. The news it delivered, she said, was 'brutal.' The Justice Department informed her that her time on the team exposed her to a data breach: A football coach from across the country whom she had never met is alleged to have used student-athletes' personal information to access their email, cloud storage and social media accounts and download their private, intimate photos or videos. 'Thinking about what he might have or does have, and not exactly knowing, it just, it makes me feel really vulnerable,' Torline said in an interview. 'I felt like a lot of what I thought was private or protected wasn't, and maybe some of that was just, like, an illusion.' A federal indictment in March charged former NFL and University of Michigan assistant football coach Matt Weiss with 14 counts of unauthorized access to computers and 10 counts of aggravated identity theft. According to the indictment, Weiss obtained unauthorized access to a platform with personal identifying information about student-athletes from more than 100 colleges and universities across the country. Weiss is accused of using the information, and additional internet research, to hack into the personal accounts of 3,300 students and alumni, mostly targeting female students, according to prosecutors. He kept notes on whose photos and videos he viewed, 'including notes commenting on their bodies and their sexual preferences,' the indictment said. Weiss pleaded not guilty to all charges in March. His attorney didn't respond to multiple requests for an interview and comment. Like Torline, many of the student-athletes who got the same notice don't know Weiss and have no idea what he might have taken. They said they aren't even sure which accounts might have been accessed or whether they're university accounts. Former student-athletes who got notices from the Justice Department that they may have been hacked, four of whom are coming forward publicly for the first time, detailed to NBC News the fear and uneasiness they say they've felt since they were identified as potential victims. They're calling for accountability — and answers. 'Cyber sexual assault' Torline is one of dozens of Weiss' alleged victims being represented by attorneys Megan Bonanni and Lisa Esser in a civil class action lawsuit. The complaint describes the allegations against Weiss as potentially 'the largest cyber sexual assault against student-athletes in U.S. history.' Bonanni and Esser have represented dozens of sexual abuse victims, including victims of Larry Nassar, a sports doctor at Michigan State University who was convicted of sexually abusing hundreds of young athletes, including members of the U.S. women's gymnastics national team. Bonanni and Esser say there has been an emotional impact on many of the 81 people they've spoken to in the Weiss case. 'It really is someone who took — without permission — very intimate, private images that are sexual in nature,' Bonanni said. 'And so, when that kind of betrayal, when that kind of assault, happens, it is a sexual assault.' Of the dozens of people Bonanni and Esser are working with, all five who spoke to NBC News said they haven't received any more details from federal authorities or their alma maters. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan declined an interview request from NBC News, citing the pending criminal case against Weiss. All five student-athletes expressed deep anxiety over being left in the dark about what may have happened. A 30-year-old woman, whom NBC News agreed to keep anonymous given the sensitive nature of the case, said she started college when she was 17 and can't help but wonder how far back Weiss could have accessed her photos. She says she's constantly digging in her mind to figure out what might have been taken from her and how young she may have been in the images. 'I still, like, wake up some days and I'm just like who, what, where, when, why and how?' she said. 'And I don't know if I'll ever get answers to that.' Towson University in Maryland, which the woman attended, told NBC News it sent notices to 'potentially effected athletes of the breach' in early June. How was the information accessed? There's still little clarity about how Weiss is alleged to have accessed the private information and how he may have been able to hack into so many accounts. Torline's lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for Central California in April as a Jane Doe, names Weiss, CSU-San Bernardino and a third-party company that owns database software that prosecutors say in the indictment Weiss used, Keffer Development Services. A search for Keffer Development Services leads to a website for The Athletic Trainer System, which says it was founded in 1994 and appears to also use the name Keffer Development Services. Its website says its electronic health records system is used by more than 6,500 organizations, including schools, and serves 2 million athletes. It also says it is HIPAA-compliant, referring to the federal law meant to protect medical records and other personal health information. According to the indictment, Weiss was able to gain access to Keffer databases by compromising accounts with elevated access, like those of athletic trainers. From there, the indictment says, he downloaded the passwords and personal information of student athletes. According to federal prosecutors, Weiss was able to access the personal identifying information for more than 150,000 athletes. This information included some encrypted files containing passwords he was allegedly able to decrypt. Weiss then, the indictment says, conducted additional internet research to learn athletes' 'mothers' maiden names, pets, places of birth, and nicknames.' From there, he was able to access student athletes' mail, cloud storage or social media accounts and download personal and intimate photos and videos, according to the indictment. In several instances, Weiss was able to exploit 'vulnerabilities in universities' account authentication processes' to access student and alumni accounts, the indictment said. There are also several unnamed 'technology providers' from which prosecutors said Weiss accessed students' photos, videos and private information. Attorneys for Keffer Development Services declined to comment. A spokesperson for CSU-San Bernardino said in a statement that it has no record of any contracts or payments to either Keffer Development Services or The Athletic Training System. NBC News wasn't able to find a publicly available list of the company's clients. CSU-San Bernardino didn't comment on whether it had taken action to inform students who might have been affected. Bonanni doesn't believe there is 'one uniform answer' to the question of how Weiss was able to access individual data, as authorities allege. 'From our understanding, there were multiple failures,' Bonanni said. 'There were vulnerabilities in college and universities' account authentication processes, as well as vulnerabilities from a third-party vendor, Keffer, and also unnamed technology providers.' The only connection to the case that the potential victims who spoke to NBC News can identify between themselves and Weiss is that they were college athletes. Feeling betrayed Clayton Wirth, 27, enjoyed playing soccer at the University of Kentucky. His time in school may have been 'intense' thanks to early morning training and hard-fought games in addition to his studies, but he loved it. Now, he questions whether he put collegiate athletics on a pedestal. Wirth said that though he has gotten general alumni mail from his alma mater, no one from the University of Kentucky has reached out to him to alert him about the breach. He feels betrayed by the school he trusted and dreamed of playing for as a kid, he said. The university failed to protect people who 'they essentially promised the world to,' Wirth said. 'It's like, hey, we looked up our entire lives to you, and then we gave you the keys, and you basically said, 'Well, we don't care about you at all.'' A spokesperson for the University of Kentucky told NBC News it hasn't received any notice from the Justice Department, including information about any other details about potential impacts on its students or alumni. It also said it doesn't use Keffer Development Services. 'We are committed to the safety and well-being of our student athletes and would promptly notify individuals if we were notified of a breach involving our systems,' the spokesperson said. The U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Michigan did not respond to a request for comment about whether they contacted all schools with students or alumni affected by the breach. Bonanni and Esser, the attorneys, noted that the Federal Trade Commission recommends a number of safeguards to protect private information, including multi-factor authentication. Multi-factor authentication, which the FTC recommended as early as 2016, requires more than just a password to log in, and it apparently wasn't enabled on many of the student email accounts, Esser said. (Other accounts, like social media, were also breached in the hack, according to the indictment). 'The sheer size and scope of this hacking and that occurred, I think, informs us that there clearly are protocols and safety measures that aren't and weren't in place,' she said. Torline and another woman, a former swimmer who has also filed a lawsuit in the data breach, allege in their suits that neither their colleges — CSU-San Bernardino and Malone University — nor Keffer Development Services required multi-factor authorization. Both former student-athletes told NBC News that they couldn't recall their universities' ever issuing guidance or information about how to secure their personal data. The former swimmer, Stephanie Sprague, 26, said she couldn't have imagined that a single year of swimming at Malone University, a private university in Canton, Ohio, could have left her so exposed. 'When it really hit me that this was happening, I was kind of, like, embarrassed, and I felt shame, like upon myself, when I know it's not my fault and I'm not the person who should be feeling this way,' said Sprague, who fears what consequences the episode could have on her nursing career. She sued Malone, Keffer Development Services and Weiss in April as a Jane Doe, accusing the university of failing to safeguard students' private information. No one from Malone University reached out to Sprague to discuss the breach before she spoke to NBC News, she said. Malone University didn't respond to a request for comment. What she wants now is accountability and assurance that changes will be made to prevent such a breach from happening to other students. 'They're not admitting that this happened,' Sprague said. 'They're not putting any comfort or ease into our minds. They're just brushing it off.' Like Sprague, Maddie Maleung, 28, feels her time playing soccer in college left her vulnerable. Student-athletes spend so much time focused on their educations and sports with the 'assumption that the information that was provided to our universities would be protected,' said Maleung, a former goalkeeper for Radford University in Virginia. A spokesperson for Radford said that the university has had no communication from authorities in relation to the breach and that it hasn't contracted services from Keffer Development Services. The school added that it takes data privacy very seriously and 'will continue to monitor the national situation closely.' Maleung, who is in a dental residency at Ohio State University, said, 'They let us down, and that information actually wasn't protected securely.' She, too, wants accountability. All of the parties involved need to look at how to make sure it doesn't happen again, Maleung said. 'There's really not an excuse anymore,' she said. 'If you collect the data, you need to protect it.'
