An Oregon middle school teacher was awarded a massive payout after she won a lawsuit alleging that her students sexually harassed her.
Susan Anglada Bartley, a 46-year-old teacher, sued the Portland Public Schools in 2023.
‘Girls in our school are being sexualized and harassed by boys.’
Bartley claimed that the abuse from the students began in the fall of 2021 and continued until the fall of 2024. The teacher’s lawyers allegedly provided more than 250 pages of emails, letters, declarations, and excerpts from depositions to show that Bartley was harassed.
The Oregonian reported that an eighth-grade boy allegedly demanded during a class in 2021 that Bartley refer to him by his new pronouns, which were reportedly a sexually explicit term.
Bartley allegedly confronted a student for using his cell phone during the class, and the boy reportedly stuffed the phone down the front of his pants. The student allegedly encouraged his teacher to “come grab it.”
The lawsuit alleged that a group of seventh-grade boys surrounded Bartley in 2022 outside the Kellogg Middle School after classes were dismissed. Bartley said the boys recorded video of her buttocks with a cell phone and allegedly exclaimed, “Sexy, sexy, sexy!”
Bartley claimed that when she turned her back to her class, boys repeatedly made grunting and guttural sounds that she later described as “somewhere between the bathroom and the bedroom.”
In another alleged incident in 2023, students reportedly moaned and whistled while Bartley was teaching.
Bartley alleged that she wasn’t the only victim of the harassment by students and claimed that female and LGBTQ students at Kellogg Middle School were victims of sexual comments and unwanted touching.
Bartley said female students at the Kellogg Middle School conducted a walkout in 2022 to address sexual harassment by male students.
“Girls in our school are being sexualized and harassed by boys,” the female protesters allegedly said at the time. “Teachers and other staff aren’t doing enough about it!”
Bartley told the Oregonian, “I continued to say we need to address this head-on. Children need to be taught boundaries.”
She continued, “When there was no consequence for the boys, boys started harassing girls more.”
Bartley claimed that the school district failed to adequately protect her from the sexual harassment that she had reported to school officials. Bartley said that she faced retaliation for blowing the whistle on the abuse.
Elizabeth Inayoshi, the lawyer who represented Bartley, said, “Kellogg and PPS ultimately instigated multiple unwarranted retaliatory investigations and discipline within a six-month period against a 20-year veteran teacher who had a spotless and award-winning record until then.”
Karen Vickers and Beth Plass, the attorneys for the school district, asserted that the “alleged sexual harassment … was isolated and sporadic and not sufficiently severe to form the basis of a hostile work environment claim.”
The lawyers argued that the district “took prompt corrective measures to remedy inappropriate student conduct.”
The lawsuit was scheduled to go to trial next week in Multnomah County Circuit Court, but the trial was canceled after Bartley reportedly agreed to settle her $550,000 lawsuit for the $301,000 that the school district offered.
As part of the legal settlement, Bartley agreed to resign from her position as eighth-grade language arts teacher.
Bartley hasn’t taught at the school since October 2024, when she claimed that a district-led attack campaign against her caused her to take medical leave.
Portland Public Schools declined to provide a comment regarding the settlement to the Oregonian.
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