Cleveland City Schools and other defendants named in a $10 million federal lawsuit filed in December 2020 have filed a formal answer denying that a middle school student was repeatedly sexually assaulted while officials did nothing and instead saying she was patted on the bottom one time.
“My clients deny any and all liability in this matter, and they intend to vigorously defend themselves in the lawsuit,” the defendants’ attorney, Jonathan Taylor, said Tuesday by email. “My clients have asserted a number of affirmative defenses and asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit in its entirety and award them their attorney’s fees and costs in the defense of this matter.”
The suit seeks $5 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. It calls the school system’s actions in the incidents “deliberate indifference to extreme student-on-student sexual harassment, sexual assault and bullying,” according to the lawsuit filed by Monteagle, Tennessee, attorney Russell L. Leonard on Dec. 11, 2020, in U.S. District Court in Chattanooga.
The plaintiffs in the suit are dubbed anonymously as Jane Doe and her parents Janet Doe and John Doe. The suit names as defendants the Cleveland City Schools Board of Education; Cleveland Middle School; Principal Leneda Laing; Vice Principal Stephanie Pirkle; school resource officer Raul Cruz; sixth-grade counselor Lauren Latoria and the student’s homeroom teacher, Terry Esquiance, and math teacher, Ashley Keith.
The defendants’ answer was filed March 15.