The news sent shockwaves through the community, leaving parents with countless questions.
A 28-year-old woman, appearing much younger than her age, was arrested for allegedly infiltrating a prestigious high school in New York City. Accused of masquerading as a teenager, she reportedly mingled with students for several weeks. She has since pleaded not guilty.
The woman in question is Kacy Claassen, though authorities and the school have shared little beyond her name.
If the allegations are true, how did she manage to enter the school undetected? Why was this particular school targeted? Who is Kacy Claassen, and what were her intentions?
So far, these questions have largely been met with silence.
While much about the case remains unclear, the Daily Mail has uncovered unsettling details about Claassen’s life and upbringing that only add to the intrigue.
The alleged stunt is eerily similar to the plot of ‘Never Been Kissed,’ the 1999 movie starring Drew Barrymore where she plays Josie Geller, an insecure 25-year-old copy editor for the Chicago Sun-Times who returns to high school for an assignment and falls in love with her English teacher.
But Claassen isn’t a reporter. She is a divorced mother-of-one with roots in Kansas who, inexplicably, traveled from Midwestern suburbia to the Bronx high school where she is accused of pretending to be a 16-year-old girl.
Kacy Claassen in 2017. She is accused of posing as a high school student in New York City for two weeks before she was caught
Kacy Claassen on her wedding day. She married Kenneth Ault in May 2021 and divorced him in August 2023
School parents were horrified when the NYPD announced they had arrested Claassen for allegedly posing as a 16-year-old girl at Westchester Square High School. She is shown during her arrest
Now, she is facing criminal charges. She has pled not guilty.
She claimed to the arresting officers that she had fled an abusive marriage and that in the past she had struggled with an eating disorder that landed her in a psych ward, according to the local Hays Post.
Her unfolding story begins at nine months, when she was adopted by Brenda and James Claassen, devout Christians.
James is a manager at local Great Plains Christian Radio, a station that plays hymns and bible passages.
On social media, Claassen makes farfetched claims about her upbringing.
She once alleged that they had kicked her out of the family home after discovering she was pregnant by a secret boyfriend.
‘My parents are going to kick me out and that means that I’m going to be homeless. I don’t want to be homeless and pregnant. I want (or rather wish) that there is someone or some family or person who would love me and care for me and help me,’ she wrote in a now-deleted Facebook post from 2021 that Daily Mail read when it was public.
She did have a baby around that time, a girl, who she would later lose custody of amid a nasty divorce.
Her ex-husband Kenneth Ault tells the Daily Mail that she lost custody of her daughter in 2023, when the child was two.
He says she was placed in the care of Claassen’s parents. It’s unclear whose care she is in now.
‘I was her stepfather and I don’t get to see her. I loved Kacy and I love [her daughter] more than anything. I’m not a perfect person, but that little girl was my absolute world,’ Claassen’s ex-husband Kenneth Ault said.
‘I grew up in the system myself, so I understand what that’s like.’
Kacy Claassen, 28, is accused of posing as a 16-year-old girl to enroll at NYC high school and was only exposed after suspicious staffers went digging on Facebook. She is a divorced mother who lost custody of her child in 2023
Kacy Claassen’s parents, Brenda Claassen and James Claassen, with her daughter
Ault met Claassen when she was 19 in Colby, KS, at the Pilot Travel Center where he was working at the time.
He said while she ‘had a vivid imagination’ and dreamed of moving to New York City to pursue an acting career, he never believed she would do anything illegal.
‘She aspired to be an actress, and would talk about New York, so whatever is going on is beyond me,’ he said.
Ault said the two married in 2021 and Claassen filed for divorce in August 2023 after a bitter argument led her to lose custody of her daughter.
The couple split, and in 2023 interview with a local Kansas newspaper, Claassen spoke gratefully of being given a second chance in women’s housing.
She said she was unemployed and homeless, and using the nonprofit’s transitional housing program to rebuild her life.
She said she came to the First Step Housing program homeless and jobless after fleeing Ault. She planned to start from scratch.
Claassen made her way through the program, found a job at as a server at a Little Caesar’s restaurant, and secured a low-rent apartment.
She purchased a used car and planned to get her daughter back.
Ault told the Daily Mail all the couple had to do for six consecutive months was work, have shelter, have a working vehicle, licenses and car insurance, and maintain their financial records.
‘I planned to do that with her. I never mistreated her, we had our ups and downs like any normal couple,’ Ault said.
In 2023, she took a new job working as an aide at Developmental Services of Northern Kansas, where she assisted adults with mental disabilities.
Kacy Claassen at 16. In 2023, Claassen said that she was unemployed and homeless and using a nonprofit’s transitional housing program to rebuild her life
Kacy Claassen as a teenager. She had her real identity uncovered through social media, prosecutors say
Her life seemed to be heading in the right direction.
That was until 2025 when she suddenly quit her job working with the disabled adults, and stopped communicating with her ex.
He learned through a mutual friend that in March of this year, she traveled to Hope Mills, North Carolina, to meet up with someone she met online. She is then understood to have taken a bus from North Carolina to New York City.
She was arrested on April 27, accused of enrolling in the school with fake documents and posing as a 16-year-old girl called Shamara Rashad.
When Ault found out she’d been arrested in New York, he said he wondered why she would try the stunt and hoped she gets help.
‘I found it a little amusing that she thinks she could do something like that,’ he said.
‘I have no ill will towards her and hope she gets the help she needs.’
The bizarre alleged scheme unraveled when the school’s social worker became suspicious and school staff discovered a Facebook account that belonged to Claassen, which showed the ‘student’ was actually an adult woman.
Kacy Claassen (far right) with her mom, sister (far left) and an aunt on her wedding day
Kacy Claassen (left) uses a goth punk filter with a friend in 2019
In the meantime, students were also growing suspicious.
‘I saw her in the back of the class, doing her work,’ sophomore Sebastian Hernandez, 16, told Gothamist. ‘She just acted like a student. She was asking the teachers questions. Like everybody.’
Prosecutors say Claassen enrolled in April, telling school officials she had recently moved from Ohio to New York with her sister.
Westchester Square Academy has about 400 students.
Claassen was arrested at the school on April 27 and arraigned the following day in Bronx Criminal Court.
Prosecutors have charged her with endangering the welfare of a child, criminal impersonation, possession of a forged instrument and criminal trespassing. She has pled not guilty.
On the day of her arrest, Lehman Campus was ‘put on a hold,’ a school rule where all students and staff must remain inside classrooms and offices until the hold is lifted.
In this instance, the school used the hold to arrest Claassen, who had been in hallways and classrooms with teens and had bathroom access.
Kacy Claassen in 2018. Prosecutors in New York have charged her with endangering the welfare of a child, criminal impersonation, possession of a forged instrument and criminal trespassing. She pled not guilty
According to the reports, Claassen spent about two weeks inside the school before administrators grew suspicious and contacted police.
Officials have not publicly said what Claassen’s motive was.
On May 5, Westchester Square Academy held a Town Hall briefing the students and students and families received an email on the same day from principal Gregory Fucheck, saying a deeper police investigation is ongoing.
The student enrolled at Westchester Square Academy through one of the DOE’s Family Welcome Centers, according to local News12.
Claassen is expected back in court on June 15.
She did not give her public defender permission to speak on her case.
