A woman who says she was groomed and sexually assaulted at school by her former South St. Paul teacher can pursue legal claims against the school district, an appeals court panel ruled Monday.
The anonymous woman sued the district in June 2020, but Dakota County District Judge David L. Knutson last year dismissed the case.
A panel of three appellate judges on Monday overturned that decision, finding in a nonprecedential opinion that a reasonable jury could conclude the school district is liable for the woman’s abuse. The case now returns to the trial court.
The lawsuit is one of two negligence cases against South St. Paul Public Schools involving sexual abuse by former teacher Aric Babbitt and his husband, Matthew Deyo.
The other case, involving a male victim and abuse that took place in a hotel and a cabin but not at school, also was dismissed by the district court judge, but the appeals court in March affirmed that decision. The judges in that case said the school district could not have foreseen what Babbitt would do to the student and that the abuse was not related to his employment.
Babbitt and Deyo were found dead in a murder-suicide in Washington state one week after an accuser first went to police in August 2016. They never were charged.
In the case that was revived Monday, Babbitt had been the woman’s first- and second-grade reading teacher, met with her regularly in his library office over the next two years, and taught her again in fifth and sixth grade. She often ate lunch in his classroom and received gifts and hugs, and during sixth grade Babbitt showed her pornography he claimed he found on a school laptop under her account.
During seventh and eighth grade, the woman attended another school but would visit Babbitt’s classroom almost daily.
She enrolled in a different school district for ninth and 10th grade but continued to skip class to visit Babbitt’s elementary classroom, with the principal’s permission. During one of those visits, Babbitt sexually assaulted the woman in his classroom while Deyo watched over a cellphone video call, according to the appeals court ruling.
The men also later sexually assaulted the woman multiple times during two trips to Babbitt’s family cabin in summer 2016, shortly before another victim went to police.
The appellate judges explained in a footnote Monday why they affirmed the dismissal of the male victim’s lawsuit but revived the female accuser’s case.
“Because the sexual assaults (against the male) occurred outside school hours and off school property, we concluded that there were no disputed material facts about whether Babbitt acted within the scope of employment when he engaged in the tortious conduct,” Judge Lucinda Jesson wrote. “ … Here, in contrast, Doe submitted evidence that Babbitt’s sexual abuse took place in the classroom, near the end of the school day, when Doe was volunteering in Babbitt’s classroom.”
The judges also found in the woman’s case that there’s enough evidence to let a jury decide whether the school district should have foreseen the abuse, based on co-workers’ observations that Babbitt often hugged and touched students.