EVERETT — Highland Christian Schools in Arlington and the school’s ex-principal, Mark Brown have been named as defendants in a civil lawsuit arising out of Brown’s criminal troubles a few years ago involving a 14-year-old student.
The girl’s parents allege that Brown, 40, groomed their daughter, isolated her from them and sexually abused her beginning in mid-2008, according to the lawsuit filed Thursday in Snohomish County Superior Court.
School officials failed to adequately protect the girl and contributed to the abuse, the couple’s attorney, Mitch Cogdill of Everett, wrote in court papers. School officials should have known of “Brown’s proclivities to be engaged with minor girls, but failed to conduct a reasonable and complete background check before hiring him and placing him in a position of authority,” Cogdill wrote.
Brown in 2009 was sentenced to a year in jail after pleading guilty to second-degree kidnapping of a minor. Prosecutors believed that Brown raped the girl in 2008 after he encouraged her to run away from home and helped her hide out at the private Arlington school. Detectives uncovered more than 600 text messages between Brown and the student, court papers said.
Brown denied raping the teen. He said the allegations against him were based on lies and the criminal charge arose from shoddy police work.
Brown said he was called to the school by another teacher who reported students had broken in and were staying at the school.
“I was there for about 10 minutes. By law what I should have done was call 911 or called her parents. I had a responsibility to report,” Brown told The Herald in 2009.
The girl told detectives Brown set up a room for her at the school, complete with a couch bed and a television. Sheriff’s detectives found the room when they searched the school.
Prosecutors agreed to drop a third-degree child rape charge in exchange for Brown’s guilty plea to second-degree kidnapping. At sentencing, the judge said he was convinced there were enough red flags in Brown’s past to warrant a sexual deviancy evaluation.
A State Department of Corrections official found that Brown “blurs appropriate boundaries in his interactions with minors.”
“While evidence may be insufficient to support the findings in the current case, I believe sufficient data exists to conclude that, in the past Mr. Brown has actively conspired to create relationships with minors to enable him to act in accordance with his illicit desires,” Christopher Glans, a community corrections officer wrote in 2009.
Brown is required to register as a kidnapper with local police.
School officials fired Brown on July 24, 2008, from his job at Highland, formerly known as Master’s Touch Christian School.
He came to the private Christian school in 2006 after he lost his previous job as a wrestling coach at Concrete High School in Skagit County. He was investigated there after allegations surfaced that he was having an inappropriate relationship with a female student.
That student denied she had any sexual contact with Brown. She told Skagit County investigators they exchanged text messages and went to dinner together, and Brown occasionally gave her a ride home. No charges were filed.
An attorney for the private school’s board told The Herald in 2008 that school officials conducted a background check before hiring Brown and spoke with his former employers. The attorney said that board members had no information about the allegations against Brown in Concrete.
Concrete High School Principal Don Beazizo said no one from Highland Christian Schools spoke with him before the private school hired Brown. Concrete school officials, however, did tell the Darrington School District superintendent that Brown had been investigated for sexual misconduct with a student. After losing his job in Concrete, Brown had expressed an interest in working with the Darrington High School wrestling team.
Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463; hefley@heraldnet.com.
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