ARLINGTON — A lawsuit filed four years ago against Highland Christian Schools and one of its teachers has been settled and dismissed.
The lawyer for a former student and her parents declined to provide any details. The case was dismissed in May. It had been scheduled to go to trial last month.
“The terms of the settlement are confidential,” Everett attorney Todd Nichols said. “I’m sure both parties are happy it’s settled and there isn’t the necessity of a trial.”
Records show that the defense asked the state Court of Appeals to step in a couple of months before the case was settled. The lawyers for the private school and teacher Steven Brown asked the appellate court to review an earlier ruling against them by a Snohomish County Superior Court judge.
The defendants had wanted to argue at trial that the former student and her parents bore some responsibility for the inappropriate relationship between the girl, then 14, and the school’s former principal. They alleged that she ran away from home and told people she was being abused at home.
Snohomish County Superior Court Judge David Kurtz earlier this year rejected the school’s argument. The law is clear that a child younger than 16 is incapable of consent and incapable of being considered for contributory fault, the judge said.
The defense filed a motion asking Kurtz to reconsider. He stood by his ruling.
It appears that the lawsuit was settled before the state Court of Appeals decided whether to review Kurtz’s ruling.
The lawsuit alleged that the school failed to adequately protect the student, now 21, from former Principal Mark Brown. School officials should have known of Brown’s “proclivities to be engaged with minor girls, but failed to conduct a reasonable and complete background check before hiring him and placing him in a position of authority,” the lawsuit alleged.
It also alleged that Steven Brown failed to help the girl after he found her hiding at school and kept her from her parents. The teacher was a mandatory reporter of suspected child abuse. He was accused of transporting the girl between hiding places on Mark Brown’s behalf.
Mark Brown is not related to Steven Brown.
Mark Brown was sentenced in 2009 to a year in jail after pleading guilty to second-degree kidnapping of a minor.
Prosecutors believed that Brown raped the girl in 2008 after he encouraged her to run away from home and helped her hide out at the school. Detectives uncovered more than 600 text messages between Brown and the student, court papers said.
Brown denied raping the teen.
Prosecutors agreed to drop a third-degree child rape charge in exchange for Brown’s guilty plea to the kidnapping charge. At sentencing, the judge said he was convinced there were enough red flags in Brown’s past to warrant a sexual deviancy evaluation.
He was ordered to register as a convicted kidnapper for 15 years.
Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463; hefley@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @dianahefley.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
