Man says Puyallup middle school teacher sexually abused him. District pays settlement
The Puyallup School District has agreed to pay $1.5 million to a former student — a man now in his 30s — who says a teacher sexually abused him, his attorney said.
“He really wanted the Puyallup School District to receive a wake-up call and to know that when you see something untoward going on between an educator and a child you have a legal obligation to come forward and report that so that it can be investigated,” the man’s attorney, Julie Kays, told The News Tribune Friday.
A school district spokesman did not respond to The News Tribune’s request for comment Friday.
Kays said the settlement was finalized in May.
The lawsuit, filed last year in Pierce County Superior Court, gives this account:
The student was a seventh grader at Kalles Junior High School during the 1995-1996 school year when he had the teacher for gym class.
The teacher invited young boys to spend the night at his home and would encourage them to get undressed.
“... hosting a group of young male students at his house is in direct violation of Puyallup School District policies, and the standard of care for any reasonable school district,” the lawsuit says.
The teacher allegedly started sending love letters to the student, which the boy’s father found when he was in ninth grade.
The father filed a complaint with the district, and the superintendent at the time directed the teacher not to have one-on-one interactions with the student at school or otherwise.
The teacher showed a “flagrant disregard” for that order, the lawsuit says and allegedly molested the student on and off campus.
The district let the teacher chaperon a field trip to Washington, D.C. when the boy was in 10th grade. He shared a room with the student and sexually abused him.
He also shared a room with and sexually abused the teenager when he took the student hunting in Eastern Washington.
The district knew about the teacher’s “predatory, manipulative and grooming behaviors, and did nothing to control him, and nothing to protect” the student, the lawsuit says.
Court records show the district settled a different lawsuit related to the teacher for $110,000 in 2006. In that case, another student alleged inappropriate comments and other behavior by the teacher when the student was a ninth grader at Kalles in the 2000s.
Appellate court records in 2014 related to the teacher’s divorce say that he “resigned from his teaching job because a student’s parents accused him of ‘grooming’ children.”
Kays said the teacher was not criminally charged and that the statute of limitations has passed.
This story was originally published July 27, 2019 at 6:30 AM.
