Concord High School Teacher-Student Rape Case Costs Close To $1M

CONCORD, NH — The combined cost to SAU 8, the Concord School District, and its insurance company, dealing with the fallout of a teacher-student rape case from 2018, is close to $1 million in costs, according to officials.

According to Business Administrator Jack Dunn, one of the accusers of Primo “Howie” Leung, a former teacher who faces rape charges in Massachusetts, reached a settlement with the district last year. The family of Fabiana McLeod, currently involved in a $100 million lawsuit against Leung and the Fessenden School in Newton, Massachusetts, reached a $545,000 settlement with the district in February 2020. Another settlement by the district, $15,000, was awarded to the Goble family in June 2019. Their daughter, Ana, was suspended after raising issues about Leung and his accused coziness with female students at Rundlett Middle School years before, in December 2014.

Both settlements were paid for by the district’s insurance company, Primex.

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SAU 8 does not have any other active settlement negotiations with other victims involved with the case or attorneys connected to the investigation.

Legal costs to deal with the matter, including payments to Djuna Perkins, an investigator from Massachusetts who put together a second report about the accusations against Leung as well as the response by educators, as well as the district’s legal counsel, Wadleigh, Starr & Peters LLC, costs, were around $162,000.

Terri Forsten, the superintendent at the time who was fired in late September 2019, received a payout of about $110,000 from the district in contractually obligated salary, unused vacation time, and sick leave, as well as health care coverage for 18 months. While she would have been paid that money if the case never occurred, it was on top of money paid to Franklyn Bass, who was hired as an interim school superintendent about a month after Forsten’s termination.

Tom Sica, the former Concord High School principal who suspended Goble for gossiping when she raised concerns about Leung, who was also the principal during the Leung investigation before the Concord police and the New Hampshire Department of Education became involved in the case, was also paid a settlement of around $140,000 for salary, vacation, and sick leave, after being terminated. He also had access to health care through the end of the 2020 school year.

The total costs of all of the settlements and payouts were around $973,000, not including the six-month and one-and-a-half-year health insurance costs for both Forsten and Sica.

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How The McLeod Settlement Was Reached

Mark Rufo, an attorney from Nashua, handled the claim against the Concord School District after drawing up a complaint for federal court on behalf of the McLeod family.

The claim was sent to the district’s attorney before it was filed. During the course of a number of meetings in Manchester across a few weeks, Rufo, the district, its attorneys, and Primex reached the $545,000 settlement figure.

It was rumored to be one of the largest settlements the company has made for a sexual case or claim.

Rufo declined to comment about the case.

$100M Lawsuit In Massachusetts

According to a number of published reports, the MacLeod family is suing dozens of people and entities connected to the case.

The district court lawsuit was filed in May against the Fessenden school, its board of directors, other teachers involved in the English language learner summer program at the school, Leung, and United Educators, the school’s insurance company, for $100 million. The lawsuit claims neither the school nor its employees or others protected their daughter from Leung’s accused predatory behavior after he involved her in the school’s summer program in 2015 and 2016 as an unpaid helper.

The school, according to reports in the Boston Globe from 2016 and 2018, has had sexual assault and abuse issues in the past.

Leung is facing two counts of aggravated rape of a child, one count of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, and one count of indecent assault and battery on a person 14 or over in Massachusetts.

Domenic Paolini, an attorney with Paolini & Haley in Woburn, MA, who is involved in the lawsuit against Fessenden and others, confirmed the case was active.

According to the lawsuit, there is at least a third victim identified in the case. Concord police, while conducting its investigations in 2019, believed there were more than two victims.

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