Friday, November 20, 2009 East Central Illinois

Second civil suit seeks $30 million in sex-abuse case

By: Amy F. Reiter

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Tuesday, September 16, 2008

URBANA – A second civil suit was filed today in Champaign County Circuit Court in connection with Jon White, the former Urbana elementary teacher convicted of 10 counts of aggravated criminal sexual abuse – eight in Champaign County and two in McLean County.

The latest suit contains 30 separate allegations, each with a request for $1 million in compensation, plus court costs.

Champaign lawyer Ellyn Bullock is representing the victim and her family, as well as three other victims of White and their families.

Bullock said that the girl for whom the suit will be filed was a victim of White from shortly after he started teaching at Urbana's Thomas Paine Elementary School – in fall 2005 – until his arrest in January 2007.

She said the compensation reflects that the girl was a victim of White's sexual abuse while she was in his class as well as the following year, both during and after school, in class and during recess.

"He was very aggressive in his pursuit of her, and therefore the damages are" extensive, Bullock said. "White's predatory behavior followed her everywhere."

Bullock cited one incident in which she said White put her client in a corner during an in-class showing of a movie and touched her inappropriately, as well as making her participate in out-of-class activities when she was blindfolded and told to lick a banana.

Bullock said that the girl's family "knew she was unhappy at school, and she didn't want to go both years" but did not know about the so-called "taste test" with the banana until White's arrest.

The suit also includes allegations against six people who were Urbana school district employees at the time: former Superintendent Gene Amberg; former Human Resources Director Carmelita Thomas; and former Thomas Paine Elementary Principal Janice Bradley, after-school supervisor Rhiannon Ross, lunchroom supervisor Lamar Walker and current teacher Kay Grabow.

In the complaint, all are accused of intentionally inflicting emotional distress on the girl and failing to report suspicions of child abuse to the Department of Children and Family Services as required by Illinois law.

The counts against Amberg, Thomas and Bradley include indifference to sexual harassment and failing to oversee curriculum – stemming from the allegation that the administrators heard White's explanation for blindfolding the students to taste and guess substances as a "Helen Keller curriculum" in November 2006 and failed to stop it.

In Champaign County criminal cases, the three former administrators are charged with failure to make mandated reports related to White. All three appeared in court Aug. 22 to deny the charge, and have a preliminary hearing set for Oct. 18.

The lawsuit accuses Bradley, Ross and Walker of negligence for allegedly allowing children to be removed from the after-school program without authorization. A count against Grabow alleges that she "learned of White's teacher-on-student sexual harassment and/or sexual grooming at Normal school district" in December 2005 and did not stop it in Urbana.

Ten allegations against the Urbana school district are included in the suit. Most of the allegations mirror those against individuals in the school district, as do the five counts against the school district in Normal.

Former Normal Superintendent Alan Chapman; Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Instruction Jim Braksick; current Principal Edward Heineman; former Assistant Principal Dale Heidbreder; and John Pye, the assistant superintendent of operations and human resources, have all been named in the suit for allegedly failing to report knowledge of White's behavior, including viewing of pornography on his school computer and several complaints from parents. They are also accused of common-law fraud for deliberately passing White off onto another school district.

Bullock said the Normal administrators' actions resulted in White having access to her client.

"She in some ways got the brunt of Normal's hot-potato pass," Bullock said.

She said that district has "absolutely refused to participate in settlement discussions."

Urbana lawyer Tom Bruno, who represents three of the victims from Urbana and one of the victims from Normal, said he has no plans to file a civil suit today.

"I don't have a sense of a timeline," he said. "We'd like to make a good-faith effort to see if the school districts can settle these claims. ... It's always worth it to exhaust every possibility before a suit is filed."

Sean Britton, who represents one of the Urbana victims and her family, said he anticipates filing a suit "in the next few days." He said, "My clients are interested in making sure this never happens again, and I think they've become increasingly convinced that the way to do that is to go through the litigation process."

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