Former teacher Laura Whitehurst talks with her lawyer in Superior Court in San Bernardino, California in 2013.
Laura Whitehurst sexually assaulted a teen for two years starting when he was just her 14-year-old student, Now, at 30, the victim has been awarded $2.25 million for the pain and trauma Whitehurst inflicted on him while school administrators allegedly looked the other way.
The hefty sum is the latest payout the Redlands Unified School District in California has made in connection to Whitehurst.
The former teacher and convicted sex offender was first arrested in 2013 after admitting to having sex with a different 17-year-old student who impregnated her. Staff at the school where Whitehurst taught, Citrus Valley High School, knew there was an inappropriate relationship going on but did nothing, according to the San Bernardino Sun.
At one point, an employee sent out an email when Whitehurst gave birth to the student’s child, featuring a picture of Whitehurst with the newborn and the minor student seated just behind her in the hospital room. School staff reportedly did not contact the boy’s parents or alert law enforcement after the picture was circulated among some staff.
It wasn’t until the boy’s mother, who suspected something was afoot with Whitehurst, raised her concerns to local police. The school district ultimately awarded that victim $6 million in 2016.
This latest restitution of $2.25 million stems from a different lawsuit filed against Whitehurst in 2021 by another former minor student. He was assaulted around the same period as the first victim who came forward.
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Whitehurst admitted to police in 2013 that she had sex with this student no less than a dozen times in 2007 and 2008. The victim’s attorney, Morgan Stewart, said Whitehurst would initiate the assault in her classroom or at her apartment and that she would lure the teenager into conversations about sex before taking it further.
Stewart did not immediately return a request for comment to Law&Crime on Monday.
Whitehurst struck a plea agreement with prosecutors in California after learning she would face 41 felony charges in 2013 and she pleaded guilty to six counts of unlawful sex with a minor. She served six months in jail and was required to register as a sex offender.
In both this settlement and the one before it — a total expenditure of $8.25 million in lawsuit settlements in roughly 10 years — the Redlands Unified School District admitted no fault.
A more than yearlong investigation by the Sun unearthed a disturbing pattern of sexual assault or abuse cover-ups and other inappropriate teacher-student relationships unfolding in the district for more than a decade. In April, the California branch of the Department of Justice opened a probe into the slew of alleged assaults and it remains ongoing, CBS reported.
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