VAN WERT — Alleging they were victims of “malicious and bad faith prosecution,” three educators from Delphos Jefferson High School have filed a civil lawsuit against parties who were involved in incidents leading to their arrest last year on misdemeanor charges of child endangerment.
Delphos Jefferson High School Principal Chad Brinkman, intervention specialist Karissa Hoersten and education administrative specialist Maureen Rentz are listed as the plaintiffs in the civil complaint that was filed in Van Wert County Common Pleas Court on April 5 — exactly one year after the trio was found not guilty in Van Wert Municipal Court of the charges against them.
Defendants in the civil suit include Delphos Jefferson teachers Jeffrey Rex and Amos Place, Detective Nathan Huebner of the Van Wert County Sheriff’s Office, Lesley Sowers of the Van Wert County Job & Family Services, Van Wert City Law Director John Hatcher, along with the city of Van Wert and Van Wert County.
The Delphos educators are requesting a jury trial to address claims that they have suffered damage to their reputations due to their alleged reckless prosecution. The are collectively seeking compensatory and consequential damages against all defendants “in an amount to be determined by the court and jury in excess of this court’s jurisdictional amount.”
They are also seeking punitive damages against Place, Rex, Huebner, Sowers and Hatcher.
A little background
The charges against Brinkman, Hoersten and Rentz were filed in January 2022 after an investigation was launched by law enforcement officials and children’s services personnel into the alleged neglect of a developmentally disabled student at the school.
A complaint filed with the state education department alleged the district failed to implement an Individualized Education Program, or IEP, for the special-needs student from June 2020 through June 2021 in violation of state statutes. Other citations were issued by the state for the school district’s failure to properly document actions taken in regard to the special needs student.
Allegations by Rex and Place claimed the student in question “routinely spent 90% of the school day in isolation.”
Van Wert Municipal Court Judge Jill Worthington dismissed the case on the first day of trial due to what she said was the failure of the state to describe an offense and because no facts supporting that claim were contained in the affidavit.
In their civil suit filed last month, the Delphos educators call the allegations from teachers at the school as “wild, fictional and unsupported.”
The fact that criminal charges were ever filed, the suit says, was “nothing short of unjust and represents a complete molestation of the criminal justice system.”
