Teachers Arrested for Sex Abuse After Ex-Student Sues

(Lexington, Kentucky) On July 9th, a former Beaumont Junior High School art teacher, Roberta Walter (previously Roberta Blackwell), was arrested in Nashville for allegedly sexually abusing a male student in the late 70s and early 80s. Walter retired in 1998.

Walter faces charges of third-degree sodomy and third-degree rape.

The charges are a result of the fallout from former student Carol Lynne Maner's civil lawsuit against the Fayette County school board. Maner's lawsuit claimed that there was a pattern of abuse concealed by the school system. On Thursday, a jury of four men and eight women awarded 44-year-old Maner $3.7 million.

Maner claimed in her lawsuit that she was denied her right to an education and slid into depression and drug addiction from alleged abuse by four teachers, a guidance counselor and an assistant principal at Lafayette High School and Beaumont Junior High School in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Maner said the board ignored her cries for help and covered up the abuse.

Maner's case was supported by testimony from other former students and parents of students. The verdict against the Fayette County Board of Education was read by Circuit Judge Thomas Clark.

Another arrest resulting from Maner's lawsuit was 60-year-old Jack Russell Hubbard, former science teacher. Hubbard has been accused of sodomizing a male student 30 times when the boy was 14 and 15 years old.

Hubbard left the Fayette School System in 1981 and taught in Department of Defense Schools for 20 years. He was arrested in Pennsylvania.