Ventura County Star
By Raul Hernandez
August 27, 2005
The Hueneme School District has agreed to pay $1.5 million to settle a lawsuit filed by two sisters who were sexually molested by Jose Felix of Blackstock Middle School, who is serving a 15-year sentence for committing a lewd sex act on a child.
Filed April 7, the settlement awards each sister $750,000 in damages, The Star has learned. Part of the settlement will go to cover court costs and legal fees.
Attorney David Ring of Los Angeles said the family was satisfied with the settlement.
"I think the case was tragic because it could have been prevented," Ring said Friday. "This reflects on the school's poor supervision of (Felix)."
District Superintendent Jerry Dannenberg said the child molestation case has hurt the school's reputation.
"It is a good school. It was definitely hurt by it," he said. "It will become a better and stronger school because of this whole thing."
Attorney Dana McCune of Los Angeles, who represented the district, didn't return calls.
The younger sister testified at the preliminary hearing of Felix's criminal case in 2003 that she and Felix engaged in a sex act inside Room 18 when he was her teacher. The older sister testified that she was his aide in 1998 and worked on the school yearbook in 1999 when he was yearbook adviser.
She said Felix, a math teacher, started hugging her and the behavior escalated to kissing and fondling.
Both sisters were 13 when they were molested.
School officials had allowed Felix to cover the lower two-thirds of his classroom windows with paper so no one could see inside the classroom, the lawsuit states.
"He had taken butcher paper and covered the windows," Ring said. "The guy knew no one was checking up on him."
Dannenberg said teachers routinely put butcher paper on the windows so students won't be distracted by outside interruptions.
"It was nothing out of the ordinary," he said. "We took it down for a while and, in most cases, it is still down."
The school will have renovation work done in the next 12 to 18 months, and the windows will be built higher. The butcher paper won't be needed, Dannenberg said.
The younger victim told a teacher's assistant at the school that Felix had kissed her romantically, and either touched or attempted to touch her breasts. However, the assistant did not report the incident to anyone. It turned out that the assistant was having an affair with Felix at the time the child reported the abuse, court records show.
By law, Ring said, the assistant, who was about 50 years old, had to report the child abuse to authorities. She no longer works at the school, he said.
Felix also routinely locked the door to his classroom during school hours, the court document states.
Dannenberg said teachers routinely lock their doors for security precautions.
There were so many warnings signs in Felix's classroom that there is no way that these sexual acts should have happened at the school, said Ring.
Dannenberg said none of the current or past officials did anything wrong in this case. However, all the officials assigned to the school when the molestation was discovered are no longer employed at the school or with the district.
"We have a new administrative team at the school, but it has nothing to do with this case," he said.
Dannenberg said the school district added training this year so teachers and staff will understand how to handle possible child molestation situations.
In another recent sexual abuse case, the Oxnard Union High School District agreed to pay $2.7 million to settle a 2001 lawsuit involving eight students molested by former Camarillo High School teacher Chad Pridgen.
McCune also represented OUHSD in that lawsuit.
