LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — A federal court has approved a $9.95 million settlement after a family sued the Clark County School District over abuse claims.
The lawsuit was originally filed in 2019 by parents of a student, only identified by the initials J.W.
According to court documents, the family claims the abuse happened from 2016 to 2018 at Harley Harmon Elementary School. The family says their non-verbal autistic child was enrolled in special education classes at the school.
In 2017, J.W.'s parents said they notified the school principal that their son wasn't getting the food and water they were sending to school for him and were concerned that he was being sent home with a full diaper. The family's lawyer claims that "school officials first ignored J.W.'s parents, then made excuses, and finally castigated and insulted J.W.'s parents."
He was removed from school for the rest of the 2016-2017 school year and was re-enrolled during the 2017-2018 school year.
However, lawyers state that J.W's parents began to notice bruising on his body and were told he had fallen on the playground. In May 2018, court documents state a substitute aide was assigned to the class and after three days in the classroom, she reported she saw the five-year-old's teacher physically and verbally abusing him.
According to a previous court affidavit, the aide told police that the teacher, later identified as Melody Carter, was yelling at him to put his shoes on, grabbed a pointer, and swung it at the boy's lower leg about five times. The wooden pointer was described as having a rubber hand on the end of it with a pointer finger. The aide claimed Carter was swinging the pointer so hard that she could hear it making noise as it was moving through the air and that it eventually broke.
The aide also told police that when Carter grabbed a pointer, the boy got into a fetal position and began to cover his legs with his hands as if he had been hit before.
The report was given to the school principal who informed CCSD Police and Child Protective Services.
Carter, was arrested on June 15, 2018 on a felony child abuse of a student charge.
Channel 13 previously spoke to the child's family after they were informed by the Clark County District Attorney's Office that prosecutors were working on a deal to reduce Carter's felony child abuse charge to a misdemeanor. Those charges were eventually dismissed after Carter agreed to attend anger management classes.
"When it comes out that your son was beaten with a stick, and a stick was actually broke on him, it's hard to describe emotionally," his father said. "We wanted to make sure that she didn't have the opportunity to do this to someone else's child."
In August 2018, the Clark County School District said Carter had resigned from teaching. She was originally hired by the district as a teacher in 1996.
J.W.'s parents claim they were only told about the pointer stick but "that school district officials concealed the report of the substitute aide from J.W.'s parents for years."
That's when the parents filed the lawsuit in 2019.
On Thursday, the United States District Court, District of Nevada approved the $9.5 million settlement between the family and CCSD.
"After years of litigation, the family is grateful that the legal aspect of this matter is now at an end," said Gregg Hubley of Arias Sanguinetti, the firm representing the family. "The trauma and pain that J.W. and his parents had to endure, not just from the abuse but from the foot dragging by the school district will last for years to come, however. We hope the district will put a plan in place so that this harm never comes to another family ever again."
Channel 13 has reached out to CCSD for a statement on the settlement. They have not gotten back to us, as of the time this story was published.
