Hamilton County school board members finally learned the settlement amount for one of the 2015 Ooltewah High School rape victims this week.
In an email Wednesday night, school board attorney Scott Bennett said “John Doe” received $750,000 as part of a settlement in a civil lawsuit against the Hamilton County Department of Education.
John Doe was one of the four then-minors who said older Ooltewah High School classmates attacked them with pool cues during a December 2015 trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, for a basketball tournament. He and another victim, “Richard Roe,” filed civil lawsuits against the district in Chattanooga’s U.S. District Court in 2016, and both settled before trial.
But their settlements were sealed, leaving school board members and the public in the dark about the actual amount. That ultimately opened the door to another legal issue after the board’s attorneys wouldn’t disclose it.
Shortly after John Doe’s case settled in the fall of 2018, Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, blasted the school district and its insurer, the Tennessee Risk Management Trust, for not disclosing the amounts.