Kansas school district to pay $800,000 to student sexually abused by her teacher
Haylee Weissenbach sought to hold her high school accountable for her sexual abuse. Now she has.
“I feel I have done something good,” Weissenbach, 21, told The Star.
Settling a federal lawsuit, the McLouth Unified School District has agreed to pay $800,000 to Weissenbach who, beginning when she was a 16-year-old junior and continuing into her senior year, was sexually abused by her high school science teacher. McLouth is in Jefferson County, Kansas, about an hour west of Kansas City.
The teacher, Anthony Kuckelman, now 36, was married with two young children at the time of the abuse. In July last year, he pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual relations. He currently is serving a 32-month sentence in a Kansas prison. His name is on the National Sex Offender Registry.
In her 2020 federal lawsuit, filed months after her 2019 high school graduation, Weissenbach claimed that the district and its superintendent, Steven Lilly, were aware that Kuckelman was engaging in an improper sexual relationship, but did nearly nothing about it.
The suit, which was scheduled to go to trial in October, claimed that instead of alerting the Kansas Department for Children and Families, as district officials are mandated to do by law, district officials acted with “deliberate indifference” — making the district negligent, violating Weissenbach’s constitutional rights, as well as her Title IX right against sexual harassment. The district’s claim was that it never had such knowledge.
The Star wrote in March about Weissenbach and her lawsuit and the ostracism she faced in a town of 1,200 people, where her father, Scott, was on the city council. Weissenbach was a scholar-athlete and a school valedictorian.
As the court date approached, the two sides went into mediation. The mediator was attorney and former Kansas City Mayor Sly James. The settlement was recorded Monday.
“The reason I sued in the first place was to make sure this didn’t happen again,” Weissenbach said this week, “and to get the administration out of the school district. That has happened. The superintendent is gone. The principal is gone.”
Janna Davis, the principal of McLouth High School, left her post this year. Lilly, the superintendent, accepted a $145,000 job as the new Chief Operations Officer of the Kansas City, Kansas, Public Schools. He began in July. The district did not know he was involved in a lawsuit when he was hired. As part of mediation, Weissenbach, through her Kansas City attorney, Daniel Zmijewski, agreed to drop the case against Lilly.
“I was actually a little hesitant to even let him do it,” Weissenbach said, “not because I thought it would make a huge difference, but because of just the principle of the thing. I didn’t want him (Lilly) to be able to get out scot-free.”
The $800,000 settlement offers Weissenbach some sense of vindication, she said.
By Kansas statute, a tort claim against the government is capped at $500,000, which means that had the case gone to trial, that is the most she could have gotten on that claim. As part of the settlement, the district did not accept blame, but Weissenbach feels that the amount sends a different message.
“I think it shows that they realized that they messed up. And they realized that there was a lot of fault there,” she said. “So I guess, in that way, it makes me feel good.”
Weissenbach and her attorney said the fact that the amount was $300,000 more than the statutory cap also shows that the district realized that a jury might view the issue of blame differently, and that the constitutional and Title IX parts of the lawsuit might have forced the district to pay out even more than $800,000.
“While the district does not accept blame, pursuant to the agreement,” Zmijewski, her attorney, said in a statement to The Star, “based on the settlement amount, it is definitely saying it does not want to hear what a jury would decide.”
Terelle A. Mock, a partner in Topeka for the law firm Fisher Patterson Sayler & Smith, representing the district, could not be immediately reached for comment. Messages to McLouth school board president Kim Troupe and to the school’s new superintendent, Jerome Johnson, a 22-year employee and the district’s former elementary school principal, were also not immediately returned.
Rumors that Kuckelman was having sex with a student half his age apparently swirled around the school for months. Zmijewski said the amount of the settlement should send all school districts a clear message.
“While kids might spread rumors or gossip, when it reaches an adult, it becomes a report and must be investigated,” he said. “Teachers, staff, administrators must remember they are the adults burdened with the job of supervising our children, not trying to fit in with them.”
No matter the settlement, the personal cost Weissenbach has endured has been great, she said: sleepless nights, anxiety, depression, counseling that is ongoing.
“I think that since all of this has finished now, and I’ve been reflecting these past couple days,” Weissenbach said, “I think it even more just solidifies the feeling that no amount of money would have ever changed what happened to me. I’m still going to have to live with what happened the rest of my life. I kind of, you know, had this hope that, once this was all over, I would just feel better. I don’t necessarily think that’s the case.
“I certainly feel vindicated. . . .But it certainly doesn’t make it all go away.”
Weissenbach graduated from Emporia State University in May. She is currently a first year student at the University of Kansas School of Law. Her younger sister, Jayden, is at Emporia State. Her brother, Camden, is a senior at McLouth High School. The family is selling their home of 20 years. Once Camden graduates, the family plans to move to Kansas City and away from McLouth for good.
“I’m never going to forget what happened,” Weissenbach said.
