{"id":225983,"date":"2026-05-09T23:12:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T23:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/225983\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T23:12:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T23:12:11","slug":"woman-accused-of-posing-as-nyc-high-school-student-claimed-she-spent-three-years-in-psych-ward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/225983\/","title":{"rendered":"Woman accused of posing as NYC high school student claimed she spent three years in psych ward"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 28-year-old woman who allegedly faked being a teenager to enroll in an NYC school<\/a> claimed she fled an abusive marriage and struggled with an eating disorder that landed her in a psych ward.<\/p>\n

Kacy Claassen told her hometown news outlet in Hays, Kansas, about three hours northwest of Wichita, that she was unemployed and homeless and using a nonprofit\u2019s transitional housing program to rebuild her life.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was definitely a humbling experience,\u201d a then-25-year-old Claassen told the Hays Post in March 2023<\/a>, claiming she had briefly lost custody of her then 2-year-old daughter because of her financial issues.<\/p>\n

Kacy Claassen was arrested for allegedly impersonating a teenager and attending a Bronx High School. Facebook\/KacyClaassen<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t regret marrying my husband, I do wish I would have seen signs sooner before I married. But every piece of life is a learning experience, I\u2019ve found.\u00a0 I have no hard feelings toward him at all. What he does with his life is his life. What he did to me was his choice,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Kansas court records show Claassen filed for divorce from Kenneth D. Ault in August 2023. <\/p>\n

Ault could not be reached for comment.<\/p>\n

Public records indicate there\u2019s only one Kacy Claassen in the country who is the same age as the woman accused of lying <\/a>to pose as a student at Westchester Square Academy in the Bronx.<\/p>\n

Years earlier, Claassen claimed to have had significant struggles with mental health issues, including five suicide attempts, depression, and grief. <\/p>\n

A friend\u2019s suicide allegedly drove the woman to contemplate her own death, she wrote in a 2018 post she wrote on Mental Health Educator AnneMoss Rogers \u201cThe Emotionally Naked Blog.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Claassen was also reportedly homeless.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am sad to say this but, shortly after she died, I wanted to take my own life\u2026\u00a0But then I remembered I had tried five times previous and did not complete them,\u201d she wrote. <\/p>\n

\u201cI thank God every day that I didn\u2019t die.\u201d<\/p>\n

Claassen also claimed she suffered from an eating disorder<\/a> and spent three years in a psych ward as a result. The Post could not confirm the claim. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was anorexic\u2026 My parents wont even let me get a job. They wont even let me move out on my own. When they found out that I was anorexic, they admitted to a psych hospital in Wisconsin. I stayed there for 3 years,\u201d she alleged.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents do not care about me,\u201d she whined on in the piece.<\/p>\n

Claassen was accused of impersonating a 16-year-old and enrolling in a Bronx high school. J.C. Rice<\/p>\n

\u201cMy parents are going to kick me out and that means that im going to be homeless\u2026. I don\u2019t 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,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

Claassen alleged said her name was Shamara Rashad and used a phony ID for two weeks while she attended the Bronx school, said authorities, who charged her with criminal impersonation and trespassing. Claassen pleaded not guilty and was released.<\/p>\n

Rogers, who last communicated with Claassen in 2018, said she feared that the young woman had been human trafficked and may have been sent to the high school to recruit others.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sounds a little like human trafficking; they get people to recruit people into labor or sex, this sounds like a pattern that I\u2019ve heard of,\u201d Rogers said. <\/p>\n

\u201cShe told me she was legally blind, if she was disabled in some way that could make her vulnerable,\u201d said Rogers, who didn\u2019t think Claassen was lying about her mental health issues but described her as \u201ca little off.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cPoor thing, I remember her as somebody who struggled,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Claassen\u2019s parents did not respond to The Post\u2019s requests for comment. Claassen could not be reached and her lawyer did not respond to The Post\u2019s multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 28-year-old woman who allegedly faked being a teenager to enroll in an NYC school claimed she fled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":225984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[3283,98,100,99,57,9,24,63,5271,340,58],"class_list":["post-225983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-arrests","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-metro","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-schools","tag-suicide","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}