Hartford — The Hartford School District last week denied the majority of the allegations set forth in a July lawsuit that claims school employees didn’t do enough to keep a young student from being sexually abused and harassed by a classmate.

The school district, through its Woodstock-based attorney, claims the then-5-year-old boy wasn’t abused or harassed while he was enrolled at the Ottauquechee School during the 2012-13 school year, according to the district’s response filed on Friday in U.S. District Court in Brattleboro, Vt.

The district also denies that its employees acted negligently and that it violated Title IX, the federal law that bars discrimination in education, as the complainants allege.

The boy’s parents anonymously sued the district this summer alleging that officials failed to put in place measures to protect their son after they brought the alleged abuse to their attention.

The family moved to Vermont from Florida so their son could attend a speech therapy program at UVM. They sued on three counts: Title IX, negligence and loss of parental consortium. They seek a trial by jury and a top-dollar financial award.

“Mother Doe” and “Father Doe” say their son, “John Doe,” disclosed the alleged abuse in April 2013 after the boy’s mother found a note written by another child that said “top secret” and “meet me at a cubby.” When she asked her son about it, he told her about the alleged abuse, which included incidents where the classmate placed his hands down the boy’s pants, according to the suit.

In the weeks after the incident, the boy’s parents met with the classroom teacher and the school principal, who vowed to keep the boys separated and the other child “strictly supervised,” the suit states.

The next day, however, the boy said the abuse hadn’t stopped, according to the suit, prompting the parents to contact Senate President Pro Tempore John Campbell and then-Secretary of Education Armando Vilaseca, who advised the parents to contact Superintendent Tom DeBalsi.

The parents obliged and met with DeBalsi, who subsequently assigned an aide to shadow the other child.

That effort failed to protect their son from ongoing abuse, the parents allege in the suit.

The district in its response on Friday acknowledged that the boy’s parents met with the classroom teacher, the principal and DeBalsi, and that DeBalsi assigned an aide. The district also acknowledged that DeBalsi did not move the other child to a different classroom, despite a push by the boy’s parents to do so.

The district, however, denied nearly all of the allegations outlined in the lawsuit, frequently stating in its response that it does not admit that there was any “sexual abuse” or “sexual harassment” of John Doe while he was at the Ottauquechee School.

For those reasons, the district seeks a judgment in its favor. The district is represented by Richard Windish of Hayes and Windish in Woodstock.

The family’s Florida-based attorney Jeff Herman said the district’s response “shows that they do not take the safety of kids seriously.

“Instead of resolving this, they are further harming this child,” Herman said via email. “I look forward to being a voice for this child in obtaining a measure of justice.”

In 2011, Herman, a lawyer that specializes in sexual abuse cases, represented a sexual abuse victim who won a $100 million jury verdict involving a retired Miami priest, NBC-Miami reported at the time.

Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com or 603-727-3248.