A southern California school district – which has suffered financially from lawsuits stemming from at least three former teachers accused of sexual abuse – will pay out another $2.25 million to a second victim of Laura Whitehurst, a former English teacher who was impregnated by another student.
The settlement brings the total price tag of the teacher's dalliances to $8.25 million, paid out to her victims by the Redlands Unified School District since Whitehurst's 2013 arrest, the the Southern California News Group reported Sunday.
Since 1999, per CBS News, at least 50 students have accused more than 25 teachers of sexual conduct within the school district. In April, the California branch of the Department of Justice opened a probe into the slew of reported sexual assaults at the school, according to another CBS report.
There had previously been a $6 million settlement involving the teenager who fathered a child with Whitehurst, a payout that Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, the law firm representing two of Whitehurst's victims, called "the largest single-victim settlement against a school district in a sexual abuse case in California’s history."
Other staff members at Citrus Valley High school knew that Whitehurst was abusing the student before post-birth photos of the student beside her in a hospital bed circulated, per the San Bernadino Sun – but in spite of California's mandatory reporting laws, the county's district attorney, Michael Ramos, did not charge any staff members with a crime.
"Prior to July 1, 2013, all that existed were unsubstantiated rumors and speculation," Ramos wrote in a press release after Whitehurst's arrest. "No factual information about a sexual relationship had been reported to any teacher or school official."
However, per the local outlet, Whitehurst and the boy were questioned about their relationship by administrators in May 2013.
It wasn't until the boy's mother called police, a month after Whitehurst gave birth to her son's child, that Whitehurst was arrested.
After a police investigation, Whitehurst faced 41 felony charges for the sexual abuse of three students, per the Redlands-Loma Linda Patch, and 29 years in prison. But after reaching a plea deal, she was convicted on six of those charges and faced a maximum of 365 days in county jail and five years of felony probation.
She is no longer incarcerated, per the California Department of Corrections, however, she must register as a sex offender for the rest of her life.
This latest $2.25 million restitution stems from another lawsuit, lodged in 2021 by a different boy who was allegedly assaulted by Whitehurst around the same time.
Morgan Stewart, the victim's attorney, told Law & Crime that the teacher initiated the encounters in her classroom and at her home after luring the teen into conversations about sex. Whitehurst allegedly told police about these crimes at the time of her 2013 arrest but that the school district spent years litigating rather than "easily resolv[ing] this case at the outset," he said.
"It would be far more noble to resolve these cases without additional harm to victims, yet Redlands continued to play the game of dragging victims through hell to assert claims against them," Stewart told the outlet. "The current superintendent [Juan Cabral] has no respect for the voice of these victims."
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Fox News Digital could not reach Stewart or the earlier victim's attorney, John Manly, for comment at press time.
Stewart alleges that the school district shows a pattern of failing to report sex crimes against students.
Per reporting by the San Bernadino Sun, former Redlands math teacher Kevin Patrick Kirkland pleaded guilty to sexually abusing four female students between 2014 and 2016, including one with special needs.
In a statement emailed to Fox News Digital, Redlands Unified School District Communications Manager Christine Stephens wrote that the district "is aware of the $2.25 million settlement in the latest Whitehurst lawsuit and is unable to comment on the specifics due to confidentiality agreements that accompany that settlement."
The school has "implemented several protocols" since the spate of sex abuse incidents, she said.
In 2018, the school enacted the ACT (Actions Create Trust) Now Initiative, per Stephens' email – this six-page policy calls for school resource officers at each district facility, mandated reporter handbooks for all employees and additional school counselors to fix on the "socio-emotional" health of students.
Per the wording of the policy, school district staff and volunteers are forbidden from "intruding on a student's physical and emotional boundaries unless the intrusion is necessary to serve a legitimate educational purpose."
Although they are not criminally reportable actions, the policy forbids teachers from addressing students with pet names, singling out particular students for personal attention or friendship, transporting any student in a personal vehicle in a non-emergency situation and having personal contact with students via cellphone.
