SUMMIT COUNTY, Ohio — A former student who had a child with his teacher in 2015 filed suit Monday against Akron and Tallmadge school officials for failing to stop the abuse.
The suit also listed former teacher Laura Lynn Cross as a defendant.
The suit states that administrators failed to “prevent adult Laura Lynn Cross from sexually abusing, assaulting, and raping the Plaintiff, a student and a minor.”
Cross served prison time at the Ohio State Reformatory for Women in Marysville after having been convicted of three counts of sexual battery. She has since been released from prison.
Cross resigned from her teaching position in 2015 following allegations of sexual abuse of a student. According to an investigation by Scripps station WEWS in Cleveland, Cross convinced the student’s mother to allow him to move in with her through a court-approved “partial parental custody” arrangement.
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In 2015, charges were filed after it came to light that the former student fathered Cross’ child.
The teen’s father previously said that he notified his son’s school district about the allegations when his son was a freshman in 2012.
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The lawsuit claims that school administrators knew about Cross’ relationship with the student going back even farther.
“It was well-known within these school systems and ignored, that Defendant Laura Lynn Cross was sexually abusing, assaulting, and raping the Plaintiff from as early as 2009, when he was only a sixth grader, all the way up until his graduation from Tallmadge High School in 2016,” the suit states.
The lawsuit, filed in Summit County Court of Common Pleas, states that administrators failed to prevent the repeated rape and sexual abuse, despite claims from the former student’s father that it was happening.
The suit states that the former student has “suffered severe and permanent physical, psychological and emotional damage as a result of these failures.”
The lawsuit seeks damages in excess of $25,000.
