{"schema_version":"0.10.0","id":"LR-2026-0656","record_version":1,"title":"Lancaster Country Day sued over students' AI deepfakes of peers","verification":{"human_verified":false,"method":"automated_gate","auto_verified":true,"score":54.0,"score_breakdown":{"source_authority":12.1,"independent_corroboration":15.0,"implicated_party_confirmed":0.0,"citation_integrity":14.0,"specificity":3.0,"completeness":2.24,"unhedged_language":5.0},"checks":{"schema_valid":true,"every_field_cited":true,"quotes_verbatim":true,"source_fetched":true,"distinct_incident":true,"dates_plausible":true,"sources_agree":true,"source_describes_incident":true,"severe_backed_by_source":true,"record_integrity":true,"eligible":true,"about_this_case":true},"gate_version":"gate-2026-10-18.7","cross_check_model":null,"cross_check_agreement":null,"duplicate_of":null,"verified_by":null,"verified_at":"2026-11-01","extraction_run_id":null,"evidence_level":{"level":"preliminary","reason":"Publisher not yet named · subject to change","original_document":null,"reports_total":3,"reports_independent":0,"reports_derivative":0,"developing":false,"disputed":false,"rules_version":"evidence-2026-10-29.1","computed_at":"2026-11-01","history":[{"date":"2026-11-01","from_level":null,"to_level":"preliminary","reason":"Publisher not yet named · subject to change"}]},"sources_hash":"bc7a2c97f40a057e57fdc84263bb0702a80e1588d569a726edcffb3f4831fded"},"system":{"model_name":null,"model_version":null,"developer":"unknown","harness":null,"tools_granted":[],"permissions_scope":null,"autonomy_level":"unknown","guardrails_present":[],"deployment_context":"unknown","tier":null,"lifecycle_stage":null,"integration_type":null,"intended_use":null,"safeguard_state":null,"production_intended":null},"event":{"date_occurred":null,"date_disclosed":"2026-07-27","incident_class":"other","failure_class":null,"agent_involved":null,"secondary_failure_classes":[],"trigger":"unknown","duration":null,"detection_method":"unknown","summary":"Two former students of Lancaster Country Day School, a K-12 school in Manheim Township, made approximately 350 deepfake nude images of 59 female students, according to a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of 13 unnamed victims. The complaint says an anonymous tip about the images reached the school in November 2023 through the state Attorney General's Safe2Say Something program, and that the school did not notify law enforcement, so more images were created and distributed before a parent report reached police in May 2024. The school disputes this: its lawyers filed a motion to dismiss, arguing the Attorney General's office had discretion to refer the tip and that the school had no legal duty to report. The district attorney confirmed the school did not notify law enforcement or file a ChildLine report but declined to file charges. The former students were ordered to serve probation and community service.","tags":[],"date_detected":null,"near_miss":null,"root_cause":null,"root_cause_detail":null,"failure_class_detail":null,"responsible_party":null,"adversarial_actor":null,"input_provenance":null,"time_to_contain":null,"operations_paused":null,"remediation":null,"precursor_events":null},"impact":{"direct_loss_usd":null,"remediation_hours":null,"records_exposed":null,"third_parties_affected_count":59,"severity":"major","severity_because":"Test: many third parties (a stated count of two or more affected parties). Fact: the lawsuit names 59 female students whose protection is claimed.","harm_class":[],"affected_description":null,"protected_class_involved":null,"data_categories_exposed":[],"loss_range_usd":null,"reversibility":null,"downstream_exposure_count":null},"evidence":{"sources":[{"url":"https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/country-day-not-liable-for-crimes-of-2-former-students-who-made-ai-deepfakes-of/article_d282ec89-cf83-456f-a2f1-8b080d4c16a1.html","publisher":"LancasterOnline","date":"2026-07-27","type":"press","title":"Country Day 'not liable' for crimes of 2 former students who made AI deepfakes of peers, attorney says | Local News - LancasterOnline","archived_url":null,"attachment":"first_report"},{"url":"https://www.wgal.com/article/lancaster-country-day-school-files-motion-dismiss-civil-lawsuit/73278637","publisher":"WGAL","date":"2026-07-27","type":"press","title":"Lancaster Country Day School seeks dismissal of AI deepfake lawsuit - WGAL","archived_url":null},{"url":"https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/read-lancaster-country-days-motion-to-dismiss-federal-lawsuit-over-ai-deepfakes/article_e73abb38-a1b4-4252-a8cd-b0099ba8da75.html","publisher":"LancasterOnline","date":"2026-07-28","type":"press","title":"Read Lancaster Country Day's motion to dismiss federal lawsuit over AI deepfakes | Local News - LancasterOnline","archived_url":null}],"per_field_confidence":{"impact.third_parties_affected_count":"C","impact.severity_because":"D","impact.severity":"D","event.incident_class":"D","event.summary":"C","system.autonomy_level":"D","system.deployment_context":"D","event.trigger":"D","event.detection_method":"D","context.country":"D","system.developer":"D","event.date_disclosed":"D","context.denominator_available":"D"},"field_citations":{"impact.third_parties_affected_count":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"Lancaster Country Day School’s lawyers filed a motion Monday to dismiss a federal lawsuit claiming the school neglected to protect 59 female students from “profound and ongoing harm” when two former students made approximately 350 deepfake nude images of them."}],"impact.severity_because":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"Lancaster Country Day School’s lawyers filed a motion Monday to dismiss a federal lawsuit claiming the school neglected to protect 59 female students from “profound and ongoing harm” when two former students made approximately 350 deepfake nude images of them."}],"impact.severity":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"Lancaster Country Day School’s lawyers filed a motion Monday to dismiss a federal lawsuit claiming the school neglected to protect 59 female students from “profound and ongoing harm” when two former students made approximately 350 deepfake nude images of them."}],"event.incident_class":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"Lancaster Country Day School’s lawyers filed a motion Monday to dismiss a federal lawsuit claiming the school neglected to protect 59 female students from “profound and ongoing harm” when two former students made approximately 350 deepfake nude images of them."}],"event.summary":[{"source_index":0,"quote":"Lancaster Country Day School’s lawyers filed a motion Monday to dismiss a federal lawsuit claiming the school neglected to protect 59 female students from “profound and ongoing harm” when two former students made approximately 350 deepfake nude images of them."},{"source_index":0,"quote":"The initial 36-page civil complaint, filed in federal court in June on behalf of 13 unnamed victims and their parents, says Country Day failed to notify law enforcement when it was initially alerted to the creation of inappropriate images through an anonymous tip filed in November 2023."},{"source_index":0,"quote":"Due to the school’s failure to act on the tip, the complaint says, a “significant number of additional” sexually explicit images were created and distributed before the Manheim Township Police Department received a parent report in May 2024."},{"source_index":1,"quote":"The Attorney General’s office had the discretion and legal authority to refer this matter to the local police or conduct its own investigation."},{"source_index":0,"quote":"Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams confirmed in December 2024 that Country Day did not notify law enforcement or file a ChildLine report when administrators received the November 2023 tip but declined to file charges against Country Day."},{"source_index":0,"quote":"The former students were ordered in March to serve probation and perform 60 hours of community service each for creating the sexual AI images of their classmates, but Country Day “is not liable for the criminal acts perpetrated by two former students,” Connaughton said."}]},"notes_on_gaps":"No AI system, model, developer or tool is named in the sources; the images were made by two students, and no autonomous agent is described, so agent_involved, failure class, system fields and autonomy were left out. The date of occurrence is not stated and the year of the June filing and March sentencing is not given, so those dates are omitted. Detection date was not set because the sources describe a tip in November 2023 and a parent report in May 2024 without saying which was the discovery. The 59 count is the number the lawsuit says the school failed to protect, and the 13 victims are the plaintiffs; both are allegations. The school disputes the failure-to-report claims and the sources do not resolve them, so no root cause, responsible party or controls are recorded. The country US is inferred from Pennsylvania state references. Incident class other and severity major are my judgements; severity rests on the stated count of 59 affected students. No remediation by the school is reported in the sources. The motion to dismiss was filed on a Monday and the article dates are 2026-07-27 and 2026-07-28, so the exact motion date is not fixed. [case created by the backfill: read by claude-haiku-5-5, backfill-2026-11-01.2, 2026-11-01; not yet reviewed] [2026-11-01: evidence level set: Preliminary (Publisher not yet named · subject to change)]"},"context":{"industry":null,"org_size_band":null,"country":"unknown","denominator_available":false,"denominator":null,"related_incident_ids":[],"systemic_exposure":null,"shared_model_id":null,"upstream_incident_id":null,"incident_evidence":null,"regulatory":null,"coverage":null},"narrative":{"steps":[{"step":"doing","text":"Two former students made approximately 350 deepfake nude images of classmates, according to the lawsuit.","quote":"Lancaster Country Day School’s lawyers filed a motion Monday to dismiss a federal lawsuit claiming the school neglected to protect 59 female students from “profound and ongoing harm” when two former students made approximately 350 deepfake nude images of them.","source_index":0,"grade":"C"}],"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"backfill-2026-11-01.2","extracted_at":"2026-11-01","source_urls":["https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/country-day-not-liable-for-crimes-of-2-former-students-who-made-ai-deepfakes-of/article_d282ec89-cf83-456f-a2f1-8b080d4c16a1.html","https://www.wgal.com/article/lancaster-country-day-school-files-motion-dismiss-civil-lawsuit/73278637","https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/read-lancaster-country-days-motion-to-dismiss-federal-lawsuit-over-ai-deepfakes/article_e73abb38-a1b4-4252-a8cd-b0099ba8da75.html"]},"analysis":{"sections":{"timeline":[{"text":"School received an anonymous tip about the deepfake images through the Attorney General's Safe2Say program.","quote":"The motion explains the school received a tip in November of 2023 about the deepfake nude images from the Attorney General's office through Safe2Say.","source_index":1,"when":"November 2023"},{"text":"Country Day conducted its own investigation of the tip, interviewing a named student and his mother.","quote":"Country Day conducted its own investigation into the tip it received in November 2023, interviewing a student named in the tip (referred to as W.D. in the suit) and his mother (B.D. in the suit).","source_index":0,"when":"November 2023"},{"text":"Parent report received by Manheim Township Police Department.","quote":"Due to the school’s failure to act on the tip, the complaint says, a “significant number of additional” sexually explicit images were created and distributed before the Manheim Township Police Department received a parent report in May 2024.","source_index":0,"when":"May 2024"},{"text":"District attorney confirmed the school did not notify law enforcement or file a ChildLine report, and declined to file charges.","quote":"Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams confirmed in December 2024 that Country Day did not notify law enforcement or file a ChildLine report when administrators received the November 2023 tip but declined to file charges against Country Day.","source_index":0,"when":"December 2024"},{"text":"Civil complaint filed in federal court on behalf of 13 unnamed victims and their parents.","quote":"The initial 36-page civil complaint, filed in federal court in June on behalf of 13 unnamed victims and their parents, says Country Day failed to notify law enforcement when it was initially alerted to the creation of inappropriate images through an anonymous tip filed in November 2023.","source_index":0,"when":"June"},{"text":"School's lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the federal lawsuit.","quote":"Lancaster Country Day School’s lawyers filed a motion Monday to dismiss a federal lawsuit claiming the school neglected to protect 59 female students from “profound and ongoing harm” when two former students made approximately 350 deepfake nude images of them.","source_index":0,"when":"Monday"}]},"model":"claude-haiku-5-5","prompt_version":"backfill-2026-11-01.2","extracted_at":"2026-11-01","source_urls":["https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/country-day-not-liable-for-crimes-of-2-former-students-who-made-ai-deepfakes-of/article_d282ec89-cf83-456f-a2f1-8b080d4c16a1.html","https://www.wgal.com/article/lancaster-country-day-school-files-motion-dismiss-civil-lawsuit/73278637","https://lancasteronline.com/news/local/read-lancaster-country-days-motion-to-dismiss-federal-lawsuit-over-ai-deepfakes/article_e73abb38-a1b4-4252-a8cd-b0099ba8da75.html"]}}