Before the trial began yesterday Thomas "Beau" Goodman III reached an undisclosed last-minute settlement with the school district, said his attorney.
But when the trial began the gory details started coming out.
This from the Herald Leader; Photo by Pablo Alcala/H-L.
Former student gives her version of events
As Carol Lynne Maner took the witness stand in her sex-abuse lawsuit against the Fayette County Board of Education yesterday, police said that two key figures in the case -- both former teachers -- have been arrested and charged with rape and sodomy.
Former Beaumont Junior High School art teacher Roberta Walter, 61, (formerly known as Roberta Blackwell) was arrested Monday afternoon in Nashville and charged with third-degree sodomy and third-degree rape, Lexington police Sgt. Jesse Harris said.
A search of municipal records showed that Walter was not working as a licensed teacher in Tennessee. She retired from the Fayette County school district in May 1998.
Jack Russell Hubbard, 60, a former Beaumont science teacher who left the district in 1981, was arrested Monday in Johnstown, Pa., and charged with one count of third-degree rape and four counts of first-degree sodomy, Harris said.
Maner first came forward with the abuse allegations in August 2003 and has accused the school district of concealing evidence of a clear pattern of sexual abuse by four teachers, a guidance counselor and an assistant principal at Beaumont and Lafayette High School during the late 1970s and into the 1980s.
Attorneys for the school board say officials were never aware of any allegations of sexual abuse and did not cause her injuries. The former teachers are not named as defendants in the suit...
...On the witness stand yesterday, Maner said that Walter took a special interest in her during the eighth grade. She said Walter talked to her for hours, took her out for hamburgers and coffee, and invited her home.
"She was very maternal at first," Maner said.
Maner, 14 at the time, would confide to the teacher, then in her mid-30s, about her unstable family life, her alcoholic father and bipolar mother with multiple personalities. Walter, smoking Marlboro Lights, talked about the cute boys in her junior high classes, Maner said.
Maner, after turning 15, baby-sat Walter's daughter one night and was sleeping the next morning in a guest bedroom while Walter's then-husband, Doug Blackwell, was at work. Maner said Walter crawled under the covers and molested Maner.
The lawsuit alleges that the school board ignored allegations of sexual abuse and thus allowed it to continue, violating Maner's civil rights and federal laws prohibiting sex discrimination in educational institutions.
Attorney Chris Miller, representing Maner, introduced several letters Walter wrote to Maner...
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