Classroom cover-up
But the judge would not toss all the claims. The plaintiffs accused the district of “deliberate indifference” which means the administrators not only ignored the students’ constitutional right under the Fourteenth Amendment to be safe from harm, but made sure those rights were not protected, explains Seikaly.
He likens the tough legal standard to a race.
“If this is a 100 yard dash, the school district gets a 20-yard head start, because we have the burden. We can’t just show negligence,” says Seikaly.
For more than a decade, students, faculty and administrators in Warren Consolidated Schools repeatedly raised concerns about the bizarre behavior of physical education instructor James Arnold Kearly.
http://www.metrotimes.com/detroit/classroom-cover-up/Content?oid=2179553
Complaints began surfacing at least as far back as 1984. He allegedly made lewd comments and gestures in front of students, peered down the shirts of middle-school girls and patted the girls’ backsides. A 19-year-old school employee accused him of sexual harassment. At one point he faced criminal charges for allegedly assaulting a girl.
And yet complaints of inappropriate actions by Kearly, who began working for the district in 1966, continued while the school district did little to stop him, even allowing him to transfer from a middle school to an elementary school. Finally, in 1998 Kearly was accused of molesting three 8-year-old girls. He resigned, pleaded no contest to fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct and was sentenced to 90 days in jail.
7:57 PM 4/19/16
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