Jury awards former student $2.1 million for sexual abuse by teacher at The San Diego Unified School District

The San Diego Union Tribune reports:

The San Diego Unified School District was negligent in failing to prevent a former teacher’s months-long sexual abuse of a student, a jury decided Wednesday.

The jury awarded $2.1 million in damages to the victim, a former student who is now 19, at the end of a trial that lasted two and a half weeks.



Toni Sutton, 40, a former Spanish teacher at Crawford High School, was sentenced to prison two years ago for having sex with the male student during a period of about eight months in 2015 and 2016.

She had sex with the student in her classroom dozens of times during first period with the door locked while the student was supposed to be in class, court documents showed, and the boy’s attendance suffered. She also had sex with him at her home and in her car.

In court documents and testimony, sources described how Sutton groomed the student, referred to as James Doe, for a sexual relationship by buying food for him, spending lots of time with him outside of class and driving him to school. The first sexual abuse occurred when the boy was 15 and the teacher was 37, according to court records.

Government schools .... more than just raping taxpayers.