KCPS pays $1 million to Lincoln Prep alum who said district’s neglect led to rape
Lincoln College Preparatory Academy sent one of its 14-year-old students from school with a violent, convicted felon who then raped the girl, according to a two-year-old lawsuit recently settled for $1 million in favor of the student.
The suit filed in Jackson County Circuit Court against the Kansas City Public School District, former school principal Dennis Walker and attendance secretary Jackie Green said the three were negligent, failed to follow district policy and did not protect the student, who is referred to in court documents as Jane Doe L.A.
“The settlement was tentatively reached in December but the settlement documents and payment were just recently finalized,” said Chris Gahagan, an attorney with the firm that represented the student. The case had been set for a jury trial in April.
“This was a tragic series of events leading to a devastating conclusion,” Gahagan said. “It should not have happened. The lesson to take away from this heart-rending occurrence is that every parent should contact their child’s school to confirm who is authorized to remove their student from school and to confirm that the school provides training to its staff on when and how to verify who picks up their child.”
At the time the suit was filed, Gerald McGonagle, another attorney on the case, called what happened to the girl, now 23, “a parent’s worst nightmare.”
School officials would only say that the lawsuit was dismissed on Feb. 25, after a settlement was reached.
According to court documents, in early May 2010 the attendance secretary at Lincoln Prep called the girl to the main office, where she was released to Roy Andrews, who had come to the school and said the girl’s parent told him to pick up the child. But Andrews was not listed as someone authorized to take the 14-year-old from school.
Court documents said, “At no point in time was Roy Andrews ever named by Doe L.A.’s mother as an individual authorized to pick (the child) up from school because of his known predatory reputation,” and it claims that school officials knew that.
Another of the girl’s attorneys said later that she left with Andrews because “she was a good little girl.”
“She was obedient, kind, a good student, studious, hard-working,” Rebecca Randles told The Star at the time the suit was filed. “The kind that if an adult in authority said, ‘You’re to go with him,’ she’d say, ‘OK.’ ”
After leaving the school, court documents say, Andrews — age 45, 200 pounds and nearly 6 feet tall — drove the girl to a motel in Independence where he raped her.
Randles said the girl’s parents knew something was wrong as soon as she returned home that day. They took her to Children’s Mercy, where she had an exam done. Medical tests showed that the child had contracted a venereal disease.
Police and the Children’s Division of the Missouri Department of Social Services investigated the case and turned it over to the Jackson County prosecutor.
Attorney’s said Walker and Green were never disciplined by the school district. Walker has since left the district.
“I am still very disappointed that the school district failed to offer any assistance to my daughter at the time they learned that his happened to her,” the girl’s mom said on Friday.
Andrews was never charged in the case but interviews with law enforcement and court documents show that prosecutors used details from the Jane Doe L.A. case as leverage to link Andrews to a 1990 sexual assault of a Kansas City woman and her 11-year-old daughter.
Andrews pleaded guilty in that case and was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
The $1 million settlement includes attorney’s fees, and is for physical and emotional damages that the attorney says still plague the young woman.
This story was originally published March 18, 2020 at 10:41 AM.
