Personal Injury Lawyer Raleigh NC - INDY News reports of an ongoing case in Raleigh NC where Personal Injury Lawyer, Robert Jessup, defends two youths of alleged sexual abuse. The students attended the Montessori School of Raleigh.
Raleigh, United States - August 20, 2019 /PressCable/ —
Personal Injury Lawyer Raleigh NC: INDY News recently reported of an ongoing North Carolina case in Raleigh NC where Personal Injury Lawyer, Robert Jessup, defends two youths of alleged sexual abuse. The two were students at the Montessori School of Raleigh. Below is part of the full news story reported by INDY. You can see the full and complete story at https://indyweek.com/news/longform/montessori-school-of-raleigh-monster-in-the-classroom/
“Part I: “Professional Boundaries”
Caroline Eidson knew something was wrong.
It wasn’t just that Nick Smith had boundary issues, or that his middle-school students at the Montessori School of Raleigh viewed him less like an authority figure and more like a friend. (“He seemed like one of us,” one recalls.) It wasn’t even Smith’s peculiar closeness with some adolescent girls—and one ninth grader in particular—or that his unnerving behavior during a school trip had led another girl to complain to her father.
Nancy Errichetti, who’d become head of school just a month earlier, was evidently troubled by what Eidson told her. On August 7, 2012, according to an email exchange obtained by the INDY, she told Eidson that she’d “had time to reflect on what you shared with me and also to seek advice from our school attorney. … I am also virtually certain I will not allow [Smith] to attend the overnight in two weeks”.
Errichetti asked Eidson to put in writing what she’d seen and heard. On August 13, Eidson did, cataloging a series of anecdotes from the previous two years. In October 2010, she wrote, during an overnight trip to a farm, “Nick was in one of the girls’ rooms … late into the night (about 11:00) for a ‘gossip session.’” In March 2011, during an overnight trip to Chapel Hill, Smith—the only chaperone—played a game of “Would You Rather?” with a group of teenage girls in their hotel room. One of the girls’ fathers told the INDY that Smith entered the room, where three boys were on one bed and three girls were on the other, told the boys to leave, turned on an R-rated movie, and asked the girls if they’d rather kiss a particular male MSR student or a female student.
After the father relayed the incident to the school’s Board of Trustees, Smith was informally reprimanded: “Nick told me that [then-head of school Meg Thomas] told him that he needed to be careful in his interactions with the girls but that she was not going to put the parent’s written concern in his file,” Eidson wrote to Errichetti.
That spring, Eidson continued, “I observed Nick and Stephanie going to and/or returning from the Pottery Shack on 2 occasions after school. … As well, I observed several times when Nick and Stephanie spent recess together, walking alone up and down the road leading to the [middle school].” In addition, she wrote, during a trip to Charleston, South Carolina, a teacher witnessed Smith and Stephanie “on the beach alone playing with one another’s hands.” (Eidson, who left MSR in 2013, declined to comment for this story.)
The day after Eidson’s email, Errichetti admonished Smith, a thirty-one-year-old N.C. State graduate who’d taught math at MSR since 2006. He was forced to sign a “behavioral plan” that included such “directives for professional conduct” as: “You should never socialize or interact with students in a way that you would socialize or interact with adults”; “You are not to be alone with any student on school property or on school trips”; and “You are not to enter a ‘girls’ [sic] hotel room on school trips.”
“Failure to abide by the directives in this plan … will result in a first warning as outlined by the Employee Handbook,” the plan concluded.
A few weeks later, Eidson informed Errichetti that, on a trip in early August, Smith had gone to the girls’ floor of a hotel to wake them up. “While what he did is certainly not as egregious as some of his previous behavior,” Eidson wrote in an email, “there really is no reason that he needs to approach the girls’ rooms at all when there are female chaperones who can do it instead.”
“My conversation with Nick was explicit and thorough,” Errichetti replied. “Given our understanding at the time, there was no need for me to excuse him from trips. Unless I get some real clarity about this recent choice, this may change.”
It didn’t change.
Nicholas Conlon Smith continued teaching at MSR—and chaperoning trips—until November 7, 2017, when he was arrested on more than twenty charges of statutory rape and child pornography stemming from a sexual relationship Raleigh police say he had with Stephanie in 2011 and 2012. Smith is currently in the Wake County jail on a bond of more than $3 million and faces decades behind bars.
In January, Stephanie, her younger sister Kristen (also not her real name), and their parents filed a lawsuit against Smith, Errichetti, and MSR, alleging not only that Smith had abused Stephanie on the school’s watch but that he’d later molested Kristen as well. (In March, a grand jury indicted Smith on separate charges of grabbing Kristen’s breasts and buttocks and attempting to kiss her.) The lawsuit claims the school “willfully failed to take appropriate actions that would have prevented the egregious sexual molestation of [Smith’s] young female students, including but not necessarily limited to Stephanie and Kristen.”
Whether this inaction rises to the level of criminal conduct is a complicated question. What is clear, however, is that if Stephanie Johnson hadn’t broken her silence, Nick Smith might still be in an MSR classroom today.”
About Personal Injury Lawyer Raleigh NC – Robert Jessup (“Robby”) is a serious personal injury lawyer and wrongful death attorney. He has been inducted as a Lifetime Member of the Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum for winning numerous multi-million dollar recoveries. Robby has also been recognized as one of the Top 40 Lawyers Under 40 by The National Trial Lawyers. You can contact Robby at (984) 205-4255 or at his website https://www.rduinjurylaw.com/robby-jessup/
Contact Info:
Name: Robby
Email: Send Email
Organization: RDU Injury Law - Personal Injury Lawyers
Address: 5410 Trinity Road, Suite 210, Raleigh, NC 27607, United States
Phone: +1-919-355-9904
Website: https://www.rduinjurylaw.com/
Source: PressCable
Release ID: 88908957
