Barstow Unified settles teacher sex abuse suit for $2.38 million

The San Bernardino Justice Center in San Bernardino. (File photo by Jennifer Cappuccio Maher/Inland Valley Daily Bulletin)

By Beau Yarbrough | byarbrough@scng.com | San Bernardino Sun

UPDATED: May 31, 2024 at 1:43 p.m.

Barstow Unified has agreed to pay $2.38 million to settle a child sex abuse lawsuit.

The victim in the case was abused by former district teacher, coach and administrator Mark L. Hassell.

“Barstow Unified School District has a child sexual abuse scandal brewing that is on par with what we have seen within Redlands Unified School District and the Los Angeles Unified School District,” the victim’s attorney, Morgan Stewart, said in a May 23 statement released by his firm, Manley, Stewart & Finaldi.

Barstow Unified’s “actions and court filings in this case clearly demonstrate their propensity to cover up reports of child sexual abuse and their total disregard for the safety of students,” Stewart said.

Redlands Unified has paid more than $45.5 million in settlements since 2016 to settle lawsuits alleging sex abuse of students by former district teachers. The district is now working with both the federal Office for Civil Rights and the California Department of Justice to reform how it handles reports of sexual abuse. In 2011, LAUSD paid $139.2 million to settle 150 claims of teacher sex abuse centered on a former teacher at Miramonte Elementary School.

“The Barstow Unified School District is committed to its responsibility to educate students in a safe environment and it takes this responsibility seriously,” district spokesperson Marseilles Chavez said in a written statement. “The Barstow Unified School District will continue to pursue its mission to help students achieve academic success in an environment that is safe and conducive to learning.”

In 2016, Hassell pleaded no contest to oral copulation with a minor, and was sentenced to a year in San Bernardino County jail and five years of probation. His victim was the plaintiff represented by Manley, Stewart & Finaldi in the settlement stemming from an August 2021 lawsuit.

According to the suit, Hassell groomed the student at Barstow High School and Barstow STEM Academy over a two-year period from 2004 through 2005, when she was 16 and 17 years old. Though the abuse occurred 16 years prior, the plaintiff filed suit in 2021, two years after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 218, allowing victims of childhood sexual abuse until age 40 to file lawsuits.

The young woman today suffers from “embarrassment, anxiety, depression, PTSD, lack of sleep, feelings of helplessness, moodiness, and significant trust and control issues” as a result of the sexual abuse, according to the suit, harming her future job prospects as a result.

Seven district employees, including Hassell’s principal at Barstow High School, Hassell’s ex-wife (herself a teacher in the district) and the district’s former superintendent, were told of Hassell’s sexually inappropriate behavior and misconduct with students, the suit reads in part. But no one reached out to police, in apparent violation of California’s mandated reporter law, which requires public employees working with children to contact police within 36 hours if they suspect child abuse is occurring.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit wasn’t the first such victim of Hassell’s, according to the suit.

The district “knew or should have known that Hassell had engaged in unlawful sexually-related conduct with minors in the past, and/or was continuing to engage in such conduct, including two other students before plaintiff,” the suit reads in part. “Hassell had a reported prior criminal sexual history of abuse, was mandatorily reported, and/or was accused and investigated by BUSD for abuse, but (the district) failed to conduct any proper investigation to substantiate such abuse allegations, and instead left Hassell in the public educational system to eventually abuse plaintiff.”

The district’s failure to act in Hassell’s case is part of a larger culture of district officials looking the other way on sexual abuse, according to the suit.

“During the approximate time period from 2004 to the present, BUSD has had no less than 14 alleged sexual perpetrators that have existed and area alleged to have abused students within the BUSD school district,” the lawsuit reads in part.

In 2021, the district paid out $2.4 million to settle a lawsuit by a student who said she had been sexually abused by former teacher Katherine O’Neill, who died earlier that year.

According to the suit, Barstow Unified failed to act on suspected child sexual abuse reported to the district as far back as 1984.

“In sworn testimony, BUSD employees and former employees, have testified to a culture of intimidation, silence, cover-ups and looking the other way while minors in BUSD are sexually abused by BUSD employees,” the lawsuit reads in part.

According to the lawsuit, district employees weren’t trained to recognize the signs of abusers grooming future victims before 2019, leading them to miss numerous red flags in Hassell’s case, such as Hassell:

“Being around plaintiff frequently, so as to be close to her;
“Treating plaintiff special, and treating her special in front of other staff members and administrators;
“Having plaintiff alone in classrooms on campus at both BHS and BSA;
“Showing plaintiff favoritism and giving her gifts;
“Driving with plaintiff on and off campus;
“Openly flirting with plaintiff and other students on social media.”

“After a minimum of 14 sexual predators in a 16 year time frame in the district, BUSD has never undertaken to train its employees on formally reporting grooming,” the lawsuit reads in part. “BUSD administrators knew or should have known of the abuse of plaintiff, but due to their lack of training failed to recognize those signs and/or they intentionally covered up those signs.”

Current and former Barstow Unified employees testified in association with the case that suspected sexual abuse was to be reported to administrators, rather than police — in violation of the state’s mandated reporter law — and that such reports were not investigated further, according to the lawsuit.

The plaintiff’s attorneys allege the issues go all the way to the top, citing testimony by current and former school board members who apparently argued that minor sexual abuse victims’ parents could be at fault for any abuse, as a result of how the children were “raised.”

“The testimony of the Board of Trustees is indicative of the approach of the district in cases which involve failures at the school site levels. Namely to attack and shame the victims, rather than confront the failures that permitted such abuse to occur,” the lawsuit reads in part. “Once a victim has the gall to speak out, BUSD undertakes to silence them. This includes attempts to file motions preventing the minors from speaking out publicly and on social media, asserting that minors cannot express the abuse to others in any public forum, because it would ‘damage the district’ publicly.”

According to Manley, Stewart & Finaldi, Bartow Unified faces seven additional sex abuse lawsuits, representing 25 reported victims and a time period covering 1981 through 2006, involving multiple alleged perpetrators and multiple school sites. That’s one fewer reported victim than the 26 victims the firm has represented in lawsuits against Redlands Unified, which has paid more than $45 million in settlements since 2016.

And Redlands Unified, which educates about 19,920 students, according to the California Department of Education, is more than three times the size of Barstow Unified, where 6,318 students are enrolled.