‘Two years of hell’: Mom, former Lake Stevens student speak out after settlement
Published 9:45 am Tuesday, April 14, 2026
LAKE STEVENS — He seemed like a friend. At that time, she didn’t have too many friends.
“It seemed like he cared a lot about me,” Kalynn Taber, now 19, said in an interview Thursday. “He would talk to me about stuff in his life, and so I just would talk to him about stuff in mine.”
“It felt nice to have someone to talk to,” she added.
On April 6, the Lake Stevens School District paid Taber a $2 million sexual harassment settlement. She sued the district, through attorney Maridith Ramsey, in August 2024, claiming administration ignored mandatory reporting laws and failed to protect against math teacher Mark Hein’s attempts to build trust with multiple students to control and abuse them emotionally, physically and sexually, a press release said.
“The District cares deeply about the safety and well-being of every student and is committed to providing a safe, supportive and positive learning environment,” Lake Stevens School District spokesperson Jayme Taylor said in an email on April 6.
Hein is now a real estate agent based in Spokane. He did not respond to attempts for comment.
On Thursday, Taber discussed her experiences in an interview with her mom, Chari Taber, and Ramsey.
“I thought maybe I was being dramatic because I felt uncomfortable, because he was very nice to me for a while,” Kalynn Taber said on Thursday. “I didn’t want him to get in trouble, or something to happen to him, if he was just trying to be nice.”
It was confusing, she said. She assumed Hein’s intentions were good.
“He made it feel like for so long that he cared about me,” Kalynn Taber said. “So that’s what I was confused about. If he cared about me, and if he is acting this way and super nice, then why do I feel like it’s not OK.”
That is what sexual groomers do, Ramsey said on Thursday. They ingrain themselves in a young person’s life and take advantage of their insecurities, she said.
“This is this kid’s first year of high school,” Ramsey said. “Everybody’s coming back from COVID. So you’ve had all this time away from the classroom, away from understanding maybe what the boundaries are. Things have changed so much that I think that he really did capitalize on every opportunity that was given to him.”
Also, he used his power and the setting to his advantage, she said.
“It’s not like these were things happening outside of this one little safe school bubble,” Ramsey said. “This is a man who is in his 50s, right, telling her to confide in him and he’s confiding in her about his life, and I think that’s a very intoxicating feeling. To feel like you’re special enough to elicit that kind of trust and response from an adult.”
Kalynn Taber was 15 when Hein started developing their relationship in 2021, the lawsuit said. He asked Taber about her boyfriend, shared intimate details about his marriage, made derogatory comments about Taber’s mother and started showing her special treatment.
Two things occurred that helped Kalynn Taber validate her concern. First, she talked to other people about it, including another classmate who was receiving special attention from Hein.
“We both felt a little uncomfortable with what he was doing. So we had talked about it,” Kalynn Taber said. “When she told me that she felt like something weird was going on, and my friend at the time was like, ‘Oh, he shouldn’t have that close of a bond with you, and he shouldn’t be asking those sorts of questions, and he shouldn’t be changing your grades,’ and stuff like that. I was like, ‘Oh, maybe this isn’t OK.’”
Kalynn Taber also talked to her mom, but she also reacted with confusion and assumed good intentions, Chari Taber said.
“She would tell me things and I was like, ‘That’s weird. I don’t know about this,’” Chari Taber said. “You want to believe people are good and intentions are pure and so, it’s so much easier to make excuses for that than to accept, ‘Hey, maybe this person actually is a terrible human being.”
Chari Taber was a Lake Stevens School District employee at the time, serving as a family engagement and student success specialist. She left the district in November 2023.
The second thing that confirmed Kalynn Taber’s uncomfortable feelings: Hein started touching her, she said.
“That’s when I was like, ‘I definitely don’t like this,’” she said. “This is definitely trying to go in a different route than what in my head I thought our relationship was. And so, I think that was, like, the click in my head.”
Hein started drawing on Taber’s hands and arms in marker, would leave his leg touching hers when seated next to each other, touched and rubbed her thigh while seated at his desk, locked his ankle around hers under the desk and touched her exposed skin if wearing pants with holes or fraying, the lawsuit said.
He would also write her notes, give her little gifts, change her grade and would suggest different ways they could spend more time together, like having Taber become the manager of the boys’ basketball team Hein coached or having her attend a Christian overnight camp he chaperoned, the lawsuit said.
“It was a lot of things combined,” Kalynn Taber said Thursday. “One day I was just like, ‘No.’”
Eventually, Chari Taber went to Lake Stevens High School Associate Principal Tonya Grinde.
“I listed all of the things, all of the weird things, and her reactions were big,” Chari Taber said. “Everything that he was doing she was appalled by in that meeting.”
Grinde was one of the few people Kalynn Taber trusted at the time, Chari said. “She is one of the only ones we thought believed her.”
Chari Taber had worked for the district for three years at that point. She planned to retire from that job, she said. Unfortunately, what followed was “two years of hell,” she said.
“I knew they didn’t believe her,” Chari Taber said. “I have always believed in the educators. I was always a huge proponent of the Lake Stevens School District.”
However, after the complaint against Hein, school and district officials, including Lake Stevens High School Principal Leslie Ivelia and Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources John Balmer, became distrustful of both her and her daughter, Chari Taber said.
“The worst part was the school not doing anything,” Kalynn Taber said. “If my school doesn’t believe me, obviously no one else is going to believe me.”
Only Grinde seemed to believe them, she said.
Then, Grinde took part in a deposition during the lawsuit and something had changed, Chari Taber said.
“She indicated that she had no idea why Kalynn would have gone to her and she had no idea how bad it was,” she said. “Kalynn used to have to go to Grinde’s office right after lunch and wait there so that she didn’t have to walk by Mark Hein.”
“Reading her deposition was probably one of the hardest things I had to do,” she added. “They were gaslighting us into thinking, ‘Oh it’s true, we care about you.’ And then behind the scenes they’re like, ‘We don’t want to have to deal with this.’”
The district never reported Hein to the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction during that time, violating mandatory reporting state law and school district policy, the lawsuit alleged.
The lawsuit was filed on August 12, 2024. The state superintendent’s office received a complaint from the district on August 23, 2024, OSPI spokesperson Katy Payne said in an April 7 interview.
“Districts are required to notify OSPI, but they have quite a bit of time to do so,” Payne said. “Many notify us right away, but sometimes districts wait until after their own investigation.”
In March 2022, Kalynn Taber switched to a new math class, and Hein was told to have no contact with her, according to the press release.
However, during the week of April 11, Hein learned of her new class and stood outside the classroom every day, “locking his eyes on her as she walked into the new classroom,” the lawsuit said.
The Lake Stevens Police Department didn’t investigate Hein until August 2022, when an outside counselor reported him, the press release said.
Kalynn Taber was also diagnosed with psychogenic, nonepileptic seizures caused by trauma, Chari Taber said.
“She would have, like, 30-plus a day for over six months, and it was terrifying,” she said about the seizures.
Hein was charged with two counts each of fourth-degree assault with sexual motivation, sexual misconduct with a minor and communication with a minor for immoral purposes.
When the investigation started, Hein was put on paid leave, the press release said. After two years of paid leave, he resigned and received a $122,184 severance in January 2025.
In January 2023, Hein’s arraignment hearing was canceled and the case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning it could be refiled if new evidence came to light, according to a court motion signed at the time by Marysville Municipal Court Judge Lorrie Towers.
At this time, the Lake Stevens Police Department is not investigating any further, Deputy Chief Dean Thomas said in an interview on April 6.
During the lawsuit’s proceedings, the Lake Stevens School District tried to shift the focus back to Kalynn Taber, she said.
“The school or whoever you’re going against is going to look at every single aspect of your life, not just stuff that has to do with the situation,” Kalynn Taber said. “Trying to pin the way I acted or what happened to me or my medical issues or stuff that happened in the past, before this ever even happened.”
Having to relive the trauma once was already difficult, Ramsey said.
“Then being placed through the litigation process and having people dive into your medical records, your counseling records, you know, after you’ve been through so many things. So many personal, private things,” she said. “This kid is so brave.”
Kalynn Taber got through it because of her friends, family, lawyer and Lake Stevens Detective Kristen Parnell, who investigated the case, she said. “But also knowing that I was helping a lot of other people.”
During the lawsuit, people contacted Kalynn Taber to discuss their experiences with sexual assault.
“Something similar happened to me too, and now I feel like, maybe, should I talk about it,” she said they told her.
Also, she protected possible future victims because he is no longer teaching, Kalynn Taber said.
“Maybe he’s not arrested, but he’s not, at least, teaching,” she said. “Standing firm on this, even though this is hard, you have to do it because no one’s — no one wants to do this — and so, someone has to or else it’s never going to change.”
As part of the settlement, the district also agreed to increase its training of both school staff and district-level administrators related to topics including sexual grooming and mandatory reporting.
Currently, Kalynn Taber is attending Everett Community College to study medical assisting and wants to attend nursing school to specialize in pediatrics. She is also working full-time at a preschool.
“I do love being a preschool teacher, but it’s not sustainable for like, life, obviously, money-wise,” Kalynn Taber said. “So that’s why I want to do medical assisting, because it’s like, one, you’re an advocate for them. And two, I want to do something with kids — working with kids.”
Taber also plans to keep speaking out about her experience and help others feel comfortable speaking about theirs, she said.
“People don’t necessarily always think that grooming is bad, or that something can happen from grooming,” she said. “When are we ever going to be able to believe people getting groomed, because what do you think would have happened to me?”
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly spelled Chari Taber’s name.
Taylor Scott Richmond: 425-339-3046; taylor.richmond@heraldnet.com; X: @BTayOkay
