PORTLAND, Ore. -- A lawsuit filed in Multnomah County court says a Portland teacher physically and emotionally abused a student multiple times and Portland Public Schools did nothing about it.
The teacher named in the lawsuit is Sam Leach, who was a School Climate Coach at Lent K-8. The family says the student was assaulted at least five times.
Alleged abuse also reportedly happened at another school where Leach was a teacher.
The suit seeks $700,000 in damages and says the child involved suffered bruising at the time and now cries excessively and fears using the bathroom.
It also alleges the district and its employees knew about the violence but didn't do anything about it. It goes as far as saying the district hid what was happening from the child's parent and the public.
“PPS schools and Lent are supposed to be a safe place for all children. For some children, this may be the only safe place they have to go. There should not even be an issue of safety in our schools," said Carolyn Meyers, the woman who filed the lawsuit.
In April, the state Teacher Standards and Practices Commission issued a report highlighting the abusive behavior. In it, Leach agreed that the abuse took place.
During the 2012-2013 school year, a student teacher assigned to his third-grade class reported to school administrators that Leach "was physically and mentally abusive to students," the TSPC report reads.
Leach told the student teacher "the key to establishing control in the classroom was to make a child cry in the first week of school which . . . Leach quickly accomplished."
Children would be grabbed with force and pushed into chairs, wincing in pain. They were thrown against lockers, made to cry, shamed, yelled at and left unattended in hallways as punishment, the report reads.
The behavior was reported to the state Department of Human Services and school officials. The DHS did not pursue the case. The principal gave Leach a favorable job evaluation in the spring of 2013.
School district spokesman Harry Esteve told the Portland Tribune "we take issues of student safety and teacher conduct very seriously, and the district is reviewing the implications of the suspension." He provided no details of how the district handled the initial complaints.
The student teacher also told the Tribune that in spite of his behavior in the classroom, Leach was always working to polish his image outside the classroom. In a January, 2013 story in the Oregonian, Leach talks up a blog he created to communicate with parents and said he hoped to soon become a vice principal.
The Tribune reports Leach taught kindergarten the following year, then became a student behavior coach. He took a voluntary leave of absence last winter.
All this comes on the heels of the Mitch Whitehurst investigation. A couple weeks ago an independent investigation found PPS failed at all levels to address numerous sexual misconduct complaints against the former teacher.
"It's unfortunate where we are, but we are not going to stay there," said PPS board member Julie Esparza Brown.