Six years after a Chicago Public Schools teacher allegedly allowed an estranged relative of a 9-year-old boy to beat the student with belts inside the school as punishment for misbehavior, a civil trial is underway in U.S. District Court in Illinois to determine liability and damages in the case.
Jo’maury Champ, now 15, testified on Tuesday that he was dragged into the boy’s bathroom at Tilton Elementary School in Chicago in Sept. 2018 by his teacher, Kristen Haynes, 50, and Juanita Tyler, 56, a great-aunt he’d met once and did not recognize. He recounted that when Haynes left the bathroom, Tyler proceeded to beat him with two leather belts, striking him at least 20 times, reported ABC7 News.
His sister, who was in the same homeroom class that day, testified, “I heard Jo’maury scream,” adding that when he came back to class, “He was crying and had tears on his face.”
According to the lawsuit filed by Champ’s mother, Asia Gaines, Haynes had arranged with Tyler, a childhood friend, to come to the school and physically discipline the boy after he acted up in her class the day before, ostensibly for laughing and being verbally disruptive. Haynes did not get consent from or inform either his mother or father of her plans.
Haynes supplied Tyler with the belts, which she kept hanging in a closet in her classroom and regularly used on students or threatened students with, the suit says.
After the boy and his sister had breakfast at the school cafeteria on Sept. 20, they approached their homeroom classroom, finding Haynes and Tyler standing outside it. Without introducing herself, Tyler allegedly accosted Champ and and slapped him on the face, and the two women grabbed his arms and carried him down the hallway to the bathroom as he repeatedly asked, “What did I do?”
Once alone in the bathroom with the boy, Tyler, 56, commanded him to pull his pants down. When he refused, she “lost her temper and began striking the boy” over his clothes with the two large leather belts, one laid on top of the other, “landing blows on his back, buttocks and legs, breaking the skin and leaving abrasions on his body.”
Champ said that he screamed, “I want my mama!” during the beating,” and that, in response, Tyler slapped him on the mouth and kept striking him with the belt, and said, “I am your mama!”
At the time, Champ was 4 feet 5 and weighed about 66 pounds, the complaint says.
After the alleged beating, Tyler brought the crying boy back to his classroom and handed the belts back to Haynes. Champ, in front of his classmates, “sat at his desk all morning and sobbed uncontrollably, publicly shamed and humiliated by the experience,” the suit states.
Gaines, a single mother who worked as a cook, said she learned about her son’s injuries after her sister picked him up from school that afternoon and saw the marks on his body.
The lawsuit, which alleges violations of federal and state law, claims the boy has since suffered from severe and lasting post-traumatic stress disorder and has received intensive and expensive treatment and psychotherapy. He frequently wet his bed and had panic attacks in the aftermath of the incident, missed many days of school, and was prescribed medications for anxiety and insomnia.
In her answer to the complaint, Haynes denied that the boy was “disciplined as alleged” by plaintiffs. She admitted that she had two belts in her classroom but denied that she had allowed Champ to be beaten with them. She said that Tyler was an acquaintance, not a friend, and denied conspiring with her to physically punish the boy.
Haynes also claims qualified immunity from any liability for any injury claimed by the plaintiffs, noting that “a public employee is not liable for her act or omission in the execution or enforcement of any law” under the Illinois Tort Immunity Act unless such act or omission constitutes willful and wanton conduct.” Her conduct “was not willful and wanton,” she argues.
Haynes and Tyler were both charged with misdemeanor battery in connection with the alleged beating. Tyler was convicted and sentenced to a year of conditional discharge, ordered to take parenting classes, and required to register as a violent offender against youth, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
Haynes was acquitted of child endangerment and battery charges. She was dismissed without pay from her teaching job at Chicago Public Schools in Sept. 2018. She is still fighting her dismissal, reported CBS 2 Chicago News.
At the time of the incident, a CPS spokeswoman said in a release that the school district was investigating the “deeply concerning allegations” and working with the school to ensure that support was available for the student and family. “Every student deserves a safe learning environment and the district will not tolerate actions that place students in the way of harm,” it said.
Unsatisfied with their response, Gaines is also suing the Chicago Board of Education, claiming that “Haynes’ use of excessive and unreasonable force and corporal punishment” against Champ was directly caused by long-standing, widespread practices and customs of the school board and CPS. That includes their failure to supervise, monitor, correct or reprimand teachers who engage in excessive corporal punishment; their failure to investigate credible allegations of excessive corporal punishment, and their failure to properly train teachers and staff on the law and official CPS policy prohibiting excessive physical punishment.
The complaint cited an investigation by CBS 2 Chicago News in 2009 that documented 818 allegations of school beatings and mistreatment dating back to 2003, “including beatings with belts, broomsticks, yardsticks, wooden paddles and other implements.”
The investigation found that 69 percent of those abuse complaints were sustained, but the board of education “only terminated a mere 24 people or 4 percent of all CPS employees found to have engaged in physical abuse/corporal punishment,” the complaint says.
The Board of Education “was on notice of these failures of official policy and training” from that investigation, “as well as its own internal data on corporal punishment allegations/investigations/discipline,” the complaint alleges.
Its failure to hold teachers and staff accountable resulted in a “de facto city policy” of using unreasonable force against children in grades K-8 in Chicago public schools and “encouraged and emboldened” Haynes’ conduct against Champ, “providing her a license to threaten and/or use” excessive physical punishment “whenever it suited her.”
The lawsuit also finds the board liable for further injuring Champ after the alleged beating by “exposing him to re-traumatization and failing to mitigate its damages” by refusing to pay the cost of transportation to another elementary school, “a cost his low-income mother cannot afford.”
Upon his return to Tilton Elementary, the complaint alleges that the boy felt unsafe, was bullied by students and laughed at by a teacher.
Prior to the incident, Champ “was a happy, playful, trusting child in a close, loving family” who “had not suffered any form of trauma. That all changed with defendants’ actions on September 20, 2018,” the suit says, after which the boy experienced ongoing severe emotional and psychological trauma and distress.
The lawsuit seeks compensatory and punitive damages, attorneys’ fees, and legal costs from Haynes, Tyler, and the Board of Education.
In its answer to the lawsuit, the Chicago Board of Education categorically denied or pleaded ignorance to most of the allegations by Gaines and her son. It further asserted that as a local public entity, the board is not liable for punitive or other damages brought against it by an injured party or a third party under Illinois tort law. That immunity extends to liability for injury resulting from an act or omission of its employees or from any failure to enforce district policy or state law, the board argued.
The jury trial at the U.S. Courthouse Chicago is expected to last at least another week.
