A woman who attended Mount Desert Island High School in 2024 is suing the principal over damages related to an alleged assault.

The lawsuit, filed in Maine’s U.S. District Court on Tuesday, accuses Principal Matthew Haney of failing to intervene when another student assaulted her outside of the high school. She is seeking more than $100,000 in damages.

The Portland Press Herald is not naming the students because they were juveniles at the time of the alleged assault.

A bus driver called school officials on the morning of Oct. 3, 2024, to report that students had gotten into a physical fight on the bus and asked for police and several staff to assist. But when the bus parked at the school about 20 minutes later, the complaint reads, only Haney and a school nurse were present.

After leaving the bus, a student attacked the plaintiff in front of Haney; according to the complaint, the other student punched her, bit her and hit her in the head with a steel water bottle.

The student who was attacked was left with a concussion, a bite mark on her face and post-traumatic stress disorder, according to the lawsuit. She is suing the principal for not separating the students and failing “to do anything aside from watch (her) get brutally assaulted.”

School officials and the plaintiff’s attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.

Before the alleged attack, the student who was assaulted had notified Haney that the other student had been harassing her and calling her transphobic. School officials said they would plan a mediation to resolve their dispute, but that did not occur before the fight, according to the lawsuit.

Days after the alleged assault, Superintendent Michael Zboray told Bar Harbor Story that staff are trained to intervene on student altercations with a variety of deescalation strategies, with physical restraint being “a last resort, per Maine law.”

The school system’s policy states that physical restraint may only be used “if student presents an imminent risk of serious physical injury to the student or others.”

Last year, Maine lawmakers updated an existing state law on those practices, giving school staff more leeway when deciding whether to restrain and seclude students.