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| Home > News > The Special Ed Advocate News Alert, March 10, 2000 |
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On Friday, March 10, a Virginia jury awarded more than $1 million in damages to a young man who was abused by his middle school teacher. The plaintiff, now 20 years old, brought suit against the Alexandria school board and several Alexandria school administrators, including the principal. He alleged that these school administrators had been warned that middle school teacher Craig Lawson was a child molester and could have prevented his abuse. The middle school teacher, Craig Lawson, was nicknamed "Awesome Lawson." He is serving a 30 year sentence for sex crimes against students who attended schools where he taught. Attorneys for the plaintiff, Stephen Glassman and Robert Bullock, argued that Alexandria school officials knew that children were at risk from Lawson but did nothing to protect them. Key evidence came from a former student who testified that he told the principal about Lawson's sexual abuse of him during the 1970s. The principal had observed inappropriate behavior on other occasions. Despite this, the principal did not report allegations to school administrators for several months. According to the Washington Post: "A federal jury decided yesterday that the Alexandria School Board and a former elementary school principal should pay more than $1 million for being "deliberately indifferent" to signs that one of their teachers was a child molester." "Imposing an unusually high penalty against a school system, the jury ordered the School Board to pay $700,000 to Jackson Baynard, who was abused by the teacher starting in 1990 when he was a sixth-grader at Charles Barrett Elementary School. The jury said the Barrett principal at the time, Catherine Malone, was liable for $350,000." Legal experts and educators said " . . . the size of the damages imposed against Alexandria (Virginia) schools would send a warning to school systems nationwide." A spokesman for the American Association of School Administrators said, "This is the largest award I'm aware of for a trial that went all the way." Maybe 20 year old Jackson Baynard summed it up best: "Accountability was the key. And now, there's accountability." The full story is at the Washington Post site: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/2000-03/11/121l-031100-idx.html
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