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The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
Metro Nashville Schools will have to pay almost $1 million for a lawsuit involving a sexual assault that took place at Hunters Lane High School in 2017.
Damages were awarded on one of the claims after the trial, while the other claims were settled. Those amounts combined with the attorney’s costs will leave the school system giving the former student $977,378.63.
The plaintiff had already been awarded $75,000 from the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee in 2022. The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that decision in November.
Allison Bussell, Associate Law Director for MNPS, said that the majority of the money will go to cover legal fees that have added up since the suit was filed in 2017.
According to the lawsuit, the female former student was “subjected to unwelcome sexual contact by a male student” in a classroom at Hunters Lane High School in April 2017. The incident was recorded by another female student, shared by students on social media, and eventually uploaded on a pornographic site on the internet.
The student and her mother began to receive threatening messages on social media when students found out of their plans to meet with school administration. Court documents say the student told a detective that one of the threats said that her mother would be shot if she tried to enter the school.
The threats were reported to Executive Principal Susan Kessler. Court records show that Kessler denied knowing about the threats, but a list of students who had harassed the student was found in Kessler’s file of her investigation of the incident.
According to the ruling, “The school did nothing.”
The lawsuit against the school district was filed in 2017 by the student’s lawyer Stephen Crofford. There were three claims, one alleging that the school district was in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution and two alleging that the school district also violated Title IX, which protects students from sex-based discrimination.
The two claims concerning the Title IX violations stated that actions and policies of the school led her to be assaulted, and the second claimed that the school did not adequately respond to the threats she received after the assault.
During the 2016-2017 school year in which the student in this case said she was assaulted, more than 1,000 instances of sexual misconduct at MNPS schools were documented.
