The Redlands Unified School District has settled for $1.4 million a lawsuit with the first alleged victim of former high school teacher Laura Whitehurst, who sparked a sex abuse scandal after having a child with one of her students.
Whitehurst was sentenced in August 2013 to a year in county jail for sexually abusing one of her former students at Citrus Valley High School, who fathered a child with her, and two former Redlands High School students when she taught there. The disgraced former teacher served six months before she was released under the jail credit system.
Whitehurst was suspected of sexually abusing even more students during her seven-year career as a teacher and soccer coach at the district, including her first alleged victim from Redlands East Valley High School. His lawsuit, filed in October 2022, was the basis of the most recent settlement.
Including the most recent settlement, Redlands Unified has paid out $9.65 million since 2016 to the Irvine law firm Manly, Stewart & Finaldi to settle three sexual abuse lawsuits against Whitehurst and the district. The first case settled in August 2016 for $6 million, on behalf of the former student who fathered a child with Whitehurst, according to the law firm. A fourth lawsuit against Whitehurst and the district is pending.
Overall, the district has paid out more than $50 million to settle sexual abuse lawsuits filed by the firm against the district since 2016, including the Whitehurst complaints.
More than 20 teachers and administrators in the district have been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with their students over the past 10 years, said attorney Morgan Stewart, a partner at the firm, in a statement.
“There are at least 50 victims of sexual abuse within RUSD. We have discovered perpetrators that were abusing kids for 10-plus years, sometimes having multiple victims. Laura Whitehurst was one of the worst,” Stewart said. “If they had acted in 2007 and removed her from the classroom, she never would have injured our clients and other children.”
In an email Tuesday, Sept. 16, district spokesperson Christine Stephens said: “The Redlands Unified School District recognizes the profound harm caused by the actions of former teacher Laura Whitehurst. No child should ever experience the abuse and betrayal of trust that occurred, and we extend our deepest sympathy to the survivors and their families.”
Stewart said Redlands East Valley, or REV, was the first school she worked at for the district, and at the time there was little history on her regarding her sexual improprieties.
“We knew that this was her first known victim, and that it was at her first teaching location, and that due to that fact that she did not have a lot of prior notice history, this assisted in driving the resolution of the case,” Stewart said Tuesday, Sept. 16.
The lawsuit alleges that Whitehurst began sexually harassing the alleged victim in 2007, when he was a 14-year-old freshman, and the abuse lasted about a year. The former student, now 32 and living in Nevada, is identified in the lawsuit as John RGJ Doe.
Whitehurst groomed her alleged victim with sexually explicit text messages and telephone conversations under the guise of helping him with his homework and classwork. The conduct escalated with Whitehurst engaging in sex acts with her student in her classroom and in a teacher prep room on campus. She engaged in oral sex and fondling and had sexual intercourse with the alleged victim, according to the lawsuit.
A two-year investigation, started in 2018 by the Southern California News Group, found that Redlands Unified, for decades, frequently failed to report to authorities teachers and other employees accused of grooming and sexually abusing students. The investigation also showed that, in some cases, district officials thwarted police investigations of sexual abuse cases.
The SCNG investigation helped prompt investigations by the San Bernardino County civil grand jury, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and the state attorney general’s office, and prompted the district to implement sweeping reforms, including increased training on mandated reporting and awareness of grooming behaviors of sexual predators.
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