HARTFORD, Conn. (Legal Newsline) - A Connecticut judge properly dismissed a town from lawsuits by three high school football players who sued over a teacher’s sexual abuse of them, the state supreme court ruled, citing sovereign immunity and a lack of evidence school officials had reason to suspect what was going on.
The plaintiffs identified as John Does I, II and III sued the town of Madison after teacher Allison Marchese pursued and eventually sexually harassed or had inappropriate physical relations with them when they were aged 14 through 17.
Marchese was a literature teacher who also worked as a core conditioning coach on the football team. Starting with social media communications and flirting, Marchese progressed to illegal relations with the boys, for which she was ultimately sentenced to three years in jail. She blamed her behavior on a deteriorating marriage with another teacher at Hand High School, who once upon watching her interact with football players complained, ‘‘we’re going to read about [you] in the newspaper someday.”
A district court dismissed the lawsuits, finding no evidence to prove high school staffers had “reasonable cause to suspect” the teacher was abusing her students. Marchese had an exemplary record and while she had drawn attention for wearing skimpy clothing to football games and acting in flirtatious way with her students, that was not enough to conclude she was breaking the law, the court ruled.
The Connecticut Supreme Court upheld the dismissals in a decision published Dec. 7.
Government employees are generally immune to liability for discretionary acts, the court explained, because exposing them to lawsuits over their decisions would have harmful effects by reducing their ability to exercise judgment. They can be liable under state statute for negligently performing “ministerial acts,” which are duties that don’t allow for any discretion or judgment.
The plaintiffs argued on appeal that school officials failed to perform their ministerial duty to report sexual abuse as required under state law. They cited Marchese’s ‘‘sexually explicit’’ act of wearing ‘‘skimpy shorts and sports bras that exposed her genitalia and breasts’’ created reasonable cause for the coaches to ‘‘suspect or believe’’ that they were at ‘‘imminent risk of sexual mental abuse.’’ They also cited the fact her husband, a teacher at the same school who later wrote a book about his experience, had suspicions his wife was behaving inappropriately with students.
The Connecticut Supreme Court rejected those arguments, dismissing John Doe II’s 17-fact chain of suspicious clues as a “piling of inferences that distorts the actual reality apparent to the various employees in real time.” There was no official dress code for teachers at the school, although a female student would have been ordered to cover up were she dressed the same way, the court noted.
“Even if we assume, without deciding, that Allison’s attire at the football practices and in the gym pushed the boundaries of propriety in an educational setting, there is absolutely no evidence of nudity in front of students,” the court ruled.
The court also rejected an argument a police officer detailed to the school had a duty to monitor security videos that might have shown the abuse taking place. There was no evidence of a policy stating when and how often security cameras must be monitored, the court ruled.