Judge dismisses suit against NCSA and former teachers - sexual misconduct lawsuit, North Carolina School of the Arts

Dance Magazine, March, 1996 by Susan Broili

WINSTON-SALEM, North Carolina--A superior court judge has dismissed a civil lawsuit alleging sexual misconduct by two former dance teachers at the North Carolina School of the Arts. The school and the University of North Carolina school system that operates NCSA had also been named in the Suit. Filed by former student Christopher Soderlund in July, the suit was dismissed December 27. The decision was handed down as Dance Magazine was going to press; published reports and interviews suggested that the suit was dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired. Soderlund's attorney said she will appeal.

"We were naturally gratified that the judge did do that, and think it was very appropriate," NCSA chancellor Alex Ewing told Dance Magazine, in his first public comments on the lawsuit. Ewing described dealing with accusations of events that allegedly took place ten years ago as "like fighting a ghost." Public perception, shaped by the media, "assumed that it was true and assumed that it was current," Ewing said. "We don't know if it was true or not. No one has had a hearing on whether this was true or not." [A complete report on the suit appeared in the November Presstime News, page 32.

After being charged with sexual misconduct and then suspended by the school, Richard Kuch and Richard Gain resigned in August, choosing not to exercise their right to a hearing before a faculty committee. "We had enough evidence to suspend Kuch and Gain," Ewing said. In the school's own investigation, Ewing said that two other students who attended the school in the mid-eighties claimed sexual misconduct by the teachers. Soderlund's allegations sparked the NC board of governors into creating an independent commission to investigate possible sexual misconduct at the school.

According to Ewing, because of heightened awareness and recent measures taken at the school to address the issue of sexual misconduct, "at this moment there is not a safer school in the country." He said he hoped the state legislature would approve a new position of vice chancellor of student affairs, a position he said he had been trying to get authorized for five years. That person would handle all aspects of student life, and, Ewing said, provide a "totally accessible and safe procedure" for students to report sexual harassment.

According to a Winston-Salem Journal report on the proceedings, Judge D.R. Huffman did not comment in court on his ruling. However, attorneys for the two accused teachers and the school had claimed that the statute of limitations for filing a suit had expired in Soderlund's case. Soderlund said the harassment took place in 1984, when he was a 16-year-old in NCSA's high school program. In North Carolina, the statute of limitations for filing a charge of sexual harrassment is three years, or, in the case of a juvenile, three years after turning eighteen. Soderlund was twenty-seven when he filed the suit.

Soderlund's attorney, Ellen Gelbin, said her client plans to appeal the superior court ruling. "I think the North Carolina delayed discovery law supports our case," Gelbin told Dance Magazine. She said she argued in court that Soderlund was minimally incompetent to bring a lawsuit until 1993, when he discovered he had post-traumatic stress disorder.

The school has no plans to rehire Kuch and Gain, Ewing said. The teachers' lawyer could not be reached for comment at presstime.