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November 12, 2005
Harassment case costs Bellevue schools $190,500
The school district here has agreed to pay a former elementary school pupil $190,500 to settle a lawsuit her family filed claiming that boys had sexually harassed her starting when she was 7.
It's the state's largest settlement ever for a minor-on-minor sexual harassment case, said the family's attorney, Yvonne Kinoshita Ward.
"It actually makes us feel very vindicated," Barbara Crittenden, the girl's mother, told the King County Journal on Thursday, a day after a judge approved the settlement.
Crittenden sued the Bellevue School District and Newport Heights Elementary School Principal Marian Peiffer in December 2001, accusing Peiffer of doing nothing when her daughter complained about boys harassing her.
She alleged that boys at Newport Heights began harassing the girl in 1998 after she flunked a routine hearing test and had to carry a card that read "failed" because she is hearing-impaired.
One boy drew a nude picture of her and showed it to friends, the plaintiffs said. Soon, other boys started taunting her, pinching and grabbing her, pinning her against a wall and threatening to force a boy to have sex with her at a dance.
Source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/248099_harassment12.html
Posted by 4HL on November 12, 2005 2:27 PM
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