A parent says Lakota Local Schools failed to stop her daughter from being groomed and abused by a teacher and allowed him to retire without facing consequences, according to a new lawsuit.
The mother, who filed the lawsuit anonymously in federal court in Cincinnati on July 1, claims she repeatedly reported inappropriate contact between the teacher and her daughter to the district, but the situation continued to escalate until the teacher was caught sending the girl sexually explicit messages online. She is suing the district, the teachers and other administators.
The lawsuit argues this is a pattern at Lakota Local Schools.
“The District’s failures are not isolated to a single rogue teacher,” the lawsuit states. “This matter represents systemic cultural issues with the District where male teachers are trusted and protected at the expense of student safety.”
The lawsuit names five other district employees who have been accused of sexual misconduct over the past 20 years, including a former superintendent, an advisor who was sent to prison and another teacher who was allowed to return to work.
In a statement, the district said the safety of their students is its first priority and all alleged threats, misconduct and safety concerns are investigated.
“The District denies the allegations made against it in the lawsuit and believes that it contains many inaccuracies, which will be addressed by our legal counsel,” the statement said. “Due to the active litigation regarding this situation, we are limited in what we are able to share at this time.”
The district said in the statement that the teacher involved in this lawsuit was placed on administrative leave, but retired “before due process and our internal investigation could be completed.”
The Enquirer is not naming the teacher because no criminal charges have been filed against him. The Butler County Sheriff’s Office and Butler County Prosecutor’s Office did not immediately reply to questions about a possible criminal investigation. The lawsuit states a police report was made in March 2025.
The family’s attorney, Tammy Meyer, said there is now a protective order in place to keep the teacher away from the teen. Much of the conduct outlined in the lawsuit took place before Ohio’s grooming law was enacted in April 2025.
Meyer said that teachers who give up their license or retire in one state have a chance to move to another state to keep teaching. The family hopes this lawsuit gets the district to take action going forward and brings attention to the issue.
What happened?
The lawsuit said the relationship between the student and the teacher started in the 2022-23 school year when she was 13 years old. The mother said her daughter was vulnerable and had already suffered sexual abuse earlier in life, which resulted in mental health problems.
The girl and the teacher began messaging each other through the district’s Remind app, the lawsuit states. Her mother was reluctant to cut off contact because she felt her daughter might benefit from a mentor.
The following year, when the girl was in eighth grade, she started missing her regular classes because the teacher was pulling her away to participate in his program. Her mother said in the lawsuit that the district never informed her these meetings were happening.
Between eighth and ninth grade, the teacher continued to message the girl through the summer, according to the lawsuit, and the messages were becoming more personal. The mother said the district was not monitoring these messages, and nothing was done until she stepped in to limit her daughter’s time on the application.
In ninth grade, the girl was no longer in the same building as the teacher, but he would come to her building to eat lunch with her despite having no other duties there, the lawsuit states. Her mother confronted the teacher, but was told other students receive these same services.
After the district stopped using the Remind app, her mother said the communications continued via email and through Google Docs. The lawsuit states he also continued to pull the teen out of class.
“(She) began missing so much class time due to these ‘meetings’ with (the) Defendant … that her other teachers warned her that there would be consequences if she continued to be absent,” the lawsuit states. Her mother said the district never contacted her about these absences.
Her freshman year, the teacher’s behavior escalated, the lawsuit states. In March 2025, the girl’s mother saw the teacher actively typing “extremely sexually graphic content” to her daughter through a shared document on a website called Canva, according to the suit.
The mother started recording the messages and called the Butler County Sheriff’s Office. The deputy was able to record some of the messages on body camera, the suit states.
The teacher retired soon after, but her mother said the district failed to stop him from picking up her daughter when she was supposed to be at an after-school band practice in December 2025.
The lawsuit states the district failed to report the teacher’s conduct to the Ohio Department of Education as required by Ohio law, and he was permitted to voluntarily surrender his teacher license instead of facing any disciplinary action at the state level.
More teacher abuse
The lawsuit points out six other cases of employees having inappropriate relationships with students.
Lakota East High School adviser Justin Daniel Dennis pleaded guilty in January to having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old student. He was sentenced to over four years in prison.
Lakota West High School teacher Nick McGill resigned in 2023 after an investigation was launched into a relationship with a recent graduate. The lawsuit states the district had previously investigated McGill, but allowed him to continue to teach. McGill was not criminally charged.
The suit named former Superintendent Matt Miller, who also resigned in 2023. He was accused of soliciting photos of juveniles, but the district and law enforcement found no evidence of wrongdoing.
The lawsuit also named George Merk, a Lakota West teacher who was indicted in 2022 on charges related to child sex abuse material, along with Robert Supinger and Angela Johnson, who were accused of having relationships with students.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Parent says Lakota teacher groomed and abused her daughter
Reporting by David Ferrara and Cameron Knight, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By David Ferrara and Cameron Knight, Cincinnati Enquirer | USA TODAY Network
