Suit alleged corporal punishment incident was arranged by CPS teacher, who provided the belts used to whip a 9-year-old boy on school grounds.
CHICAGO – Today, after six days of emotional testimony at the Dirksen United States Court House, a federal jury deliberated for 4.5 hours before ordering the Chicago Board of Education to pay $750,000 in damages to the family of a boy beaten in a Chicago Public School.
Asia Gaines brought the lawsuit after her son “J.C.”—then only nine years old—was whipped with belts in a bathroom of George W. Tilton Elementary School in September 2018. According to the lawsuit, the boy’s homeroom teacher, Kristen Haynes, had arranged for her friend Juanita Tyler, to come to the school to discipline the boy.
Tyler was an estranged relative of the boy’s father, but a total stranger to the boy. She had no authority to be on school grounds, let alone to discipline the child, and Haynes neither sought the parents’ permission for nor informed them of the beating.
Among other troubling testimony, jurors heard J.C.’s sister describe how she could hear him screaming from the bathroom during the assault. They also heard how Haynes—who had taught at the school for 15 years—was well known as the disciplinarian of Tilton Elementary, and how the two thick, adult-sized leather belts she kept in her classroom closet were so familiar to students that they had names: “Mr. Brown” and “Mr. Black.”
In a 2020 criminal trial, Tyler was found guilty of domestic battery, but Haynes—who had been dismissed from her teaching position over the incident—was acquitted of battery and child endangerment. Today, however, the jury found both women—and the Chicago Board of Education—liable for J.C.’s pain and the post-traumatic stress he has dealt with ever since.
“We are pleased and relieved that this jury saw through the defendants’ ever-changing story and the Board of Education’s attempt to avoid responsibility for the actions of its employee,” says Al Hofeld, Jr., attorney for the family.
“The Board of Education knows full well what Kristen Haynes did to J.C.,” adds Julia Rickert, of Loevy+ Loevy, who also represented the family. “Its attorney’s argument to the jury today that such behavior could never happen in a CPS school was disingenuous and a betrayal of the public trust.”
The family was represented by Al Hofeld, Jr. and Zach Hofeld of The Law Offices of Al Hofeld, Jr. LLC, and Julia Rickert and Maria Makar of Loevy & Loevy.
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A copy of the lawsuit, Asia Gaines v. The Chicago Board of Education, Kristen A. Haynes, and Juanita Tyler, Case No. 19-cv-00775, can be found here.
For more information, please contact Michael McDunnah at 312.371.5871 or mcdunnah@loevy.com.
