A lawyer representing a 14-year-old boy who claims his high school teacher bullied him — by shoving a shoe with dog feces on it toward the boy’s face — has filed a $680,000 lawsuit against the teacher and the Klamath County School District.
P.E. teacher Peter Paul Lucas encouraged students at Henley High School to tackle the boy and pin him to the ground during the school day in March 2015, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in Klamath County Circuit Court.
During the incident, a student placed his genitals on top of the boy’s forehead “in a show of dominance,” another student gave the boy a wedgie and other students ripped off his shoes, the suit states. That’s when Lucas pushed his shoe toward the boy’s face and asked if he could smell the dog feces that he’d stepped in, the suit states.
Lucas, who also was the school’s wrestling coach, couldn’t be reached immediately for comment late Thursday. The school district also didn’t immediately return a request for comment.
The boy’s mother called police the day of the March 2015 incident.
Lucas, 59, was charged with two counts of misdemeanor first-degree official misconduct and one count of harassment. Lucas pleaded no contest to all three crimes a year later.
He was allowed to enter a diversion agreement that calls for the criminal charges to be dismissed if he fulfills all terms, including: permanently relinquishing his Oregon teaching license, completing 40 hours of community service, taking anger management classes and writing a letter of apology, according to court documents.
But the boy’s lawsuit states that nearly a year after the agreement was signed, Lucas has yet to write that apology letter. Lucas has until March 14 to do so, or he will violate his diversion agreement, according to court records.
The suit claims that the harassment that the boy suffered from other students during the 2014-15 school year was relentless — and that Lucas and the school’s athletic director refused to act when the boy repeatedly complained to them. The suit states that other student athletes called him gay slurs; spat at him; hit him “repeatedly with a sock filled with heavy objects” during an overnight wrestling trip; and in other instances, punched him in the presence of Lucas and the assistant coach.
The boy quit the wrestling team, but still had to interact with Lucas and other wrestlers because Lucas was his P.E. teacher, the suit states.
The boy, who is now 16, suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, depression and difficulty being in public places, according to the suit. He has transferred to a new high school.
The suit faults the school district for hiring Lucas given his history — according to the suit — of aggression toward students before he came to work in Klamath County.
Lucas was publicly reprimanded by the Oregon Teacher Standards and Practices Commission in 2001 “for using physical force against a student and yelling at the student in an angry, confrontational manner” in the Crook County School District, according to the lawsuit.
The suit states that in 2002, Lucas “grabbed a student by the neck and shoulder area to physically move the student to the office for disciplinary reasons.” The state commission suspended his teaching license for 60 days, according to the suit.
Portland attorney Risa Davis is representing the boy.
