School Faces Another Suit Over Allegations Of Abuse Alleged Victim Says Fondling By Teacher Put Her In Hospital
The Newport School District is being sued again because of a former music teacher who was accused of routinely fondling preteen girls in his classes.
Orlando C. Nickelson, now 63, pleaded guilty in 1988 to attempted indecent liberties in a plea bargain that cost him his teaching certificate and 50 days in jail.
The school district, which was accused of ignoring complaints about Nickelson for years, paid almost $1 million in 1989 to settle lawsuits filed by 10 girls.
An 11th alleged victim, who is now 21, is seeking unspecified damages for emotional problems she attributes to abuse by Nickelson when she was 11 or 12 years old.
Nickelson declined to comment. So did Spokane attorney Jerry Leveque, who represents the district on lawsuits involving Nickelson.
In addition to Nickelson and the school district, the new lawsuit names seven current and former principals and school board members.
Nickelson’s latest accuser, Shannon Larson, formerly Shannon Johnson, waited until this summer to sue in federal and state courts. She has now dropped the federal lawsuit so the one in Pend Oreille County Superior Court can proceed, her attorneys said.
“We determined that the federal court probably would have made the state court apply its laws first,” Newport attorney Dennis Scott said.
His Spokane co-counsel, Rick Fancher, said Johnson didn’t sue earlier because of personal problems.
Her lawsuit blames Nickelson for a family breakdown that put her in foster care for part of her teenage years. She dropped out of school after the 10th grade, although she later earned a general equivalency diploma.
Larson also blames Nickelson for psychiatric problems that caused her to be hospitalized twice at Pine Crest Hospital. Her medical bills exceeded $100,000, according to her lawsuit.
The suit says Nickelson “continuously sexually abused, harassed and intimidated” Larson and other girls during the 1986-87 school year at Sadie Halstead Elementary.
A June 1987 Newport police report indicates Larson told authorities “Mr. Nick” repeatedly fondled her chest and buttocks. He did the same to numerous other girls in her music class, she said.
“He would always make us cry in front of the class and then hug and kiss us to make us feel better, but it didn’t make us feel better,” she said at the time.
Parents said at the time that Nickelson was transferred to the grade school six years earlier because of complaints by Newport High School girls and their parents. A teacher for 30 years, Nickelson had been with the Newport School District for 19 years when then-Superintendent Dave Smith fired him.
Smith fired Nickelson in June 1987 for violating a 1984 warning to have no physical contact with students. The firing came days after a 12-year-old girl reported that Nickelson placed his arm around her and reached inside her shirt to touch her chest.
While investigating that and other complaints, Newport Police Chief Doug Malby (now the Pend Oreille County sheriff) said a school counselor told him one girl complained five times in the previous year that Nickelson touched her inappropriately. Malby said in a court document the counselor stated he advised the girl to “tell Mr. Nickelson ‘no’ and walk away.”
Former school board member Phyllis Kardos, who went on to become a school principal in another district, said in a 1988 interview that she told the board around 1980 about reports of abuse by Nickelson. She said she heard he was telling dirty jokes in class and drawing dirty pictures on the blackboard.
Kardos said other board members, all men, dismissed the issue with comments such as, “‘Oh, well, he does that all the time.”’
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