Another girl has come forward saying she was sexually assaulted by a boy already accused of assaulting and raping several girls at Upper St. Clair High School.

The girl, a 16-year-old who was a freshman at the time, said she asked school officials to notify police more than a month before at least three of her classmates were raped in a stairwell and hallway at school.

If school officials -- eight of whom are being sued in federal court for allegedly failing to remedy a sexually hostile environment -- had gone to police when she complained in late December, other girls might not have been assaulted and raped, she said in an interview this week.

"It took all of them getting hurt for him to get punished," she said in the telephone interview. "It could have been prevented with me."

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette does not identify victims or accusers in sexual assault cases.

The boy accused of raping and assaulting his classmates was a 14-year-old freshman at the time. After school officials notified the police in February, he was charged with rape, simple and aggravated assault, and terroristic threats.

A June 23 hearing for the boy in juvenile court was postponed.

The 16-year-old girl said she and the boy started out as friends; the two attended the same emotional support program at school, along with several other girls who say they also became his sexual assault victims.

First, he was just friendly, but then began flirting with her, she said. When she told him she had a boyfriend and wasn't interested, she said he began assaulting her before and after their emotional support class, in the secluded hallway outside the classroom.

"I'd be walking one way and he would be walking the other, and that's when it would happen," she said.

According to the girl, school officials did not call police in late December after she notified her emotional support teacher at the school, Esther Haguel, that the boy had been aggressively pushing her up against the wall and fondling her nearly every day since late October.

On multiple occasions, she said, he fondled her, telling her he would hurt her if she tried to stop him.

"He was very aggressive with me, but I wasn't going to let him have his way," she said. "I wasn't raped by him, but I was assaulted."

At first, she said she thought she could handle the assaults on her own, and could get him to stop by being firm and telling him "no," but she found that wasn't the case.

She told her parents about the assaults in late December, after speaking to Ms. Haguel.

She said Ms. Haguel took her to talk to the school's assistant principals, Jace Palmer and Louis Angelo. The girlsaid she told Mr. Angelo that she had been assaulted by the boy on numerous occasions, and asked him to notify police.

None of the three school officials, who are among those named as defendants in the federal lawsuit, returned calls seeking comment.

The Upper St. Clair School District issued a statement Tuesday saying officials acted appropriately in the case. The district "responded immediately when it was apprised of the nature of the allegations being made by students that are referred to in the complaint," the statement read.

The district's attorney, Ted Brooks, did not return calls seeking comment.

The 16-year-old said high school officials waited several days before talking to the boy. She said they saw evidence on a school video camera that touched her inappropriately but didn't think it was enough evidence to punish him until she showed them harassing text messages from the boy.

Within days,school officials placed the boy under an in-school restraining order that prohibited him from physical and verbal contact with the girl, but she said he continued trying to grab her. When she complained to Mr. Angelo, he told her he would "take care of it," but the boy continued trying to touch her, she said.

She said his punishment included a three-day in-school suspension in the emotional support classroom where at least two of his victims still attended class.

"I saw him every day and he was allowed to talk to whoever and do whatever he wanted," the girl said.

On Friday, Feb. 1, according to the federal lawsuit filed by another alleged victim, the boy raped another girl in a secluded stairwell. The following Monday, he allegedly raped another girl at 3:30 p.m. A half-hour later, he dragged the girl who filed the suit, referred to in court papers as Jane Doe, out of a girls' bathroom and into the same stairwell, where he raped her.

The next day, Jane Doe reported the rape to Ms. Haguel, who went to school administrators. They called the 16-year-old girl's parents and Upper St. Clair police. At that time, the girl said, police interviewed her about the alleged assaults.

Ms. Haguel told the boy to write notes of apology to his victims during his in-school suspension, according to Jane Doe's federal lawsuit. But the 16-year-old said in the interview if that happened, she never received an apology from him.

Since the boy's release from juvenile detention into house arrest, the thought of him living nearby in Upper St. Clairsometimes has made her sick, she said.

"He doesn't live that far away, so I would have nightmares about it," she said. "I would get physically ill."