Posted on 07/19/2002 4:12:13 PM PDT by ValerieUSA
The families of 20 children abused by a former Waco elementary school teacher have settled their federal lawsuit against the Waco school district.
The settlement, reached last week after a day-long mediation session, calls for the children to split $550,000.
The children, who were abused by former teacher Alan Eugene Slates while in his first-, second- or third-grade classes, each will receive from $11,000 to $38,500 under the terms of the settlement, according to Waco attorneys Greg White and Aubrey Williams, who represented the children and their families.
The amount of the individual award hinged on the severity and frequency of abuse that each child suffered, White said. Both sides confirm that they have resolved the lawsuit, but the settlement still must be approved by U.S. District Judge Walter S. Smith Jr. before the suit can be dismissed, White said.
While parties to the suit say they are pleased to get the dispute behind them, at least one father of an abused student remains dedicated to changing the law in Texas, which currently does not allow for the recovery of monetary damages for students who are sexually molested in public schools.
That's why White and Williams filed the lawsuit in federal court as a civil rights violation case.
"It is just a shame that Texas is one of the few states where our kids are not protected in school," said the father of a student abused by Slates who asked not to be identified. "The way the law is right now, you cannot sue a public school system if your child is abused in a public classroom. If he is injured in a school bus accident, you can sue. But you can't sue if he is abused by a teacher. Does that sound right? That needs to be changed."
The father, a federal employee, said he plans to contact his local legislators to ask if they will introduce a bill to change the law.
"The individual who committed these crimes is in prison, but these families are going to have to face this the rest of their lives," he said. "My son is 11 now and he still has to sleep with the light on, and it is still hard for me to believe that the state of Texas provides no protection if it happens in a public school."
Slates, a former teacher at J.H. Hines Elementary School and Alta Vista Montessori Magnet School, pleaded guilty in February 2001 to 11 counts of indecency with a child and was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Prosecutors at the time said they dismissed first degree felony charges that carried a potential life sentence in the plea bargain with Slates in part to keep the young children off the witness stand.
Slates pleaded guilty to fondling 11 of his students, male and female, and ranging in age from 7 to 11. The abuses for which he pleaded guilty occurred from December 1997 to February 2000 in his classrooms, at his house, at a movie theater where he had a part-time job and at a Valentine's Day party, prosecutors said.
Slates also verbally and physically abused the children, locked them in closets and threatened to kill them or their parents if they told anyone that he was sexually abusing them, according to records filed in the case.
Waco school board president Allen Sykes attended the mediation session last week.
"We are in the process of a settlement, and at this time, since it hasn't been finalized, I am not comfortable with elaborating on it or making a comment," Sykes said. "But we are looking forward to having it behind us and getting it resolved and getting on with the task at hand, and that is educating and serving the needs of the kids."
The lawsuit alleged that WISD officials knew that Slates exhibited inappropriate behavior with students as early as 1998 but did nothing to stop it.
Rochelle Peters, Alta Vista principal, testified in a deposition for the lawsuit that she wrote a letter reprimanding Slates after it was discovered that he was taking kids from the school without their parents' permission and was alleged to have slapped a child, White said. However, school officials could not produce the letter when White and Williams sought it through the lawsuit discovery process, White said.
"There was never any formal testimony or finding and the judge never got a chance to rule whether school officials knew or didn't know about the abuse," White said. "But we stand by the allegation that they knew that he was unreliable, had a bad temper and had been recommended for counseling.
"They received word during his employment that he was taking kids away from the school and received a call from a counselor ... that this was a serious error in judgment. That counselor believed he may have been setting up children for abuse, and the school district's reaction to that was that he needed to get parental consent before taking kids off campus," he said.
White said that other school administrators testified in depositions that they were cautious in dealing with Slates because they didn't want to hurt his career.
"We alleged in our filings that the reason they were not more diligent about Slates was to protect him, not to protect the kids," White said.
Not so, says Sykes and Ryan Griffitts, a Dallas attorney who represents the school district in the lawsuit.
"WISD officials obviously did not know that Slates was engaging in the type of behavior for which he was arrested, and when the accusations of abuse were made in March of 2000, district officials quickly and thoroughly investigated the matter and suspended Slates," Griffitts said. "WISD police arrested Slates and the district initiated termination proceedings to remove him from the district permanently."
Sykes said the school system began monitoring Slates more closely in his classroom after the complaint that he was taking children from school.
"We began to monitor him more closely, but obviously we didn't know about the action he was engaging in," Sykes said.
White said that some of the sexual abuse of children in Slates' classrooms occurred during the stepped-up monitoring period.
"It seems ironic that when they supposedly increased that monitoring, quite a few kids were abused by Slates," White said. "Experts that reviewed the cases of the various kids said Slates' conduct was indicative of the conduct of a sexual predator, and they should have been aware of that. They are professionals. That is their job to know how to protect kids."
White said he supports the parents' efforts to change the state law and might join them in their crusade.
"I think the parents are interested on behalf of other school kids to see if the Legislature will at least make an effort to protect the school children of Texas, which to this point has done nothing but to protect the schools," White said. "I think most people would be shocked to learn that Texas law does nothing to protect their kids from injury at the hands of sexual predators."
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