LONG BEACH, N.Y. –Long Beach, New York middle school special education teacher Lisa Weitzman once forced a male student to masturbate in front of his classmates, according to a recently filed lawsuit.

The notice of claim filed in Nassau County Supreme Court against Long Beach Public Schools on behalf of five former students also alleges Weitzman forced her disabled students to eat foods that made them sick, restrained them with zip ties, pushed them against walls, verbally berated them, gave one student a lap dance, among other outrageous behavior, Courthouse News Service reports.

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Parents of five of Weitzman’s students – four male and one female – are suing the school district for $25 million – $5 million for each victim, attorney Gerard Misk told The Huffington Post.

“While I have seen other instances of abuse that have been appalling, this one is worse because these are the most vulnerable children,” he said. “The families trusted this teacher and the school and had their trust destroyed.”

Misk told the news site the children involved suffer from Down syndrome or autism, and could not communicate the alleged abuse to their parents. He said the lawsuit targets the school district for failing to take action against Weitzman to stop the abuse despite numerous warnings from teaching assistants.

The alleged abuse took place between 2011 and 2014, the Post reports.

Details of the alleged abuse came to light in a school disciplinary hearing to terminate Weitzman that began March 4. Weitzman has been suspended from teaching since late 2014, the Long Beach Herald reports.

The school district presented eight charges against Weitzman in the hearing, which was held in public at the teacher’s request.

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“Ms. Weitzman did not do the heinous acts of which she is accused,” Weitzman’s attorney, Debra Wabnik, told the news site in an email. “She elected to have a public hearing because she has nothing to hide. She devoted herself to caring and advocating for the children entrusted to her and their families. If anyone failed these kids, it was the district. That will be borne out as the hearing continues.”

More than 20 members of the public attended the hearing, where Weitzman’s supervisor testified that she routinely used a classroom bathroom as a time-out space despite repeated instructions to stop. Weitzman was reportedly reassigned for the bathroom issue, but district officials did not inform parents until nearly a year later, Special Education PTA co-president Patrice Krezminski said.

“They felt horrible … that they didn’t see that this may or may not have happened to their child,” Krezminski said of parents of the alleged victims. “ … (T)hey wanted answers, and the district did the best they could with answering legally in terms of what they can and cannot say.”

The special education PTA pressured school officials and the board of education to more thoroughly investigate the allegations against Weitzman, which prompted the hearing and subsequent lawsuit.

“It’s not that we didn’t care; we didn’t know about it,” Krezminski said. “We’re not lawyers. We’re not employed by the district. There’s only certain things we can do, which we did.”

But the lawsuit against the school district alleges that school officials were well aware of Weitzman’s misdeeds and did not take action until the school board was contacted by the teacher’s union about the situation.

“Though at least 11 teachers assistants filed complaints about Weitzman over the past seven years, none of the 11 complaints were ever investigated, according to the petition” cited by Courthouse News. “That changed in November 2015 when the former head of the teacher’s union fired of a letter to school board president, Roy Lester, demanding action, the petition states.”

The charges in the lawsuit and the termination hearing detail basically the same abuse – stomping on students’ feet with heels, using the bathroom as a time-out area, zip-tying or duct taping students to restrain them, and other alleged physical abuse.

The lawsuit, but not the school charges, allege the teacher forced a male student to masturbate in front of his classmates, while the school hearing documented allegations Weitzman performed a lap dance on a student, and ducted taped gloves on the hands of a student to prevent the child with playing with their feces – which were not in the lawsuit.

School officials, meanwhile, have largely kept quiet about the case.

“Please know that Long Beach has complied, and will continue to comply, with all federal and state legal requirements regarding complaints to the district about possible abuse or mistreatment of our students,” superintendent David Weiss told the Post in a statement.

“Laws protecting the privacy of students prohibit us from saying anything more.”