Alleging sexual abuse, former Ben Lippen School student sues teacher, school

Warning: This story contains descriptions of sexual abuse.

A graduate of Ben Lippen School - a Christian boarding school formerly located in West Asheville - is suing a former female teacher and the school, alleging years of sexual abuse.

Rachel Howald, 50, says in the lawsuit filed Jan. 15 in Buncombe County Superior Court that Pamela Kaye Herrington, a teacher and coach at the high school, sexually assaulted her repeatedly from 1986-88 when she was 16 and 17 years old, and that the school provided multiple opportunities for the teacher to victimize her.

The alleged assaults took place in dormitories and Herrington’s campus apartment, in school vehicles used for transporting student athletes, at school athletic events off campus, in hotel rooms during travel for sports and in Howald’s own home, according to the suit.

“For anybody that came before me and, God forbid, anybody that may have been a victim after me, that was enough of an impetus to come forward,” Howald told the Citizen Times this week.

Related: Reports of child sexual abuse rise sharply in Asheville, Buncombe County

Howald is able to bring the suit based on the North Carolina act to protect children from sexual abuse and strengthen and modernize sexual assault laws, which went into effect Dec. 1, 2019. The new law requires anyone age 18 and older to report potential violent or sexual offenses against child victims to law enforcement.

Another aspect, known as the “look back” law, allows victims of child sexual abuse at any time to bring civil lawsuits against their attackers through Dec. 31, says Howald's representation, Boz Tchividjian, an attorney with Landis Graham French PA in DeLand, Florida.

Howald is also being represented by the Fidelity Law Group of Charlotte and Peter Janci of Portland, Oregon.

Before the law went into effect, minor victims only had until age 21 to sue for damages. The statute of limitations was also raised to age 28.

Howald is asking for compensatory damages and punitive damages for the “severe physical and mental injuries arising from the sexual assaults/batteries” she suffered by Herrington, in an amount to be determined by a jury trial.

It's really hard to put a specific dollar amount on what happened to Rachel and the impact it's had on her life. We think the jury is best suited to make that determination after hearing all of the evidence,” Tchividjian said.

Related: Buncombe County DA: Investigation underway into alleged Asheville School sexual assault

According to the lawsuit, Herrington was in her late 30s and unmarried when she was hired by the school in 1982. Of the many claims, the lawsuit alleges that Ben Lippen School allowed Herrington to live in one of the girl’s dorms alongside the students, gave her unsupervised and unrestricted access to the students’ rooms and used her position to target, groom and “sexually victimize” some of those students, including Howald.

The lawsuit alleges that Herrington began grooming Howald, whom she coached on three teams, by providing her with special benefits not available to other students, such as allowing her to listen to any music she wished, including music not approved by the school.

“Every instance of Defendant Herrington’s sexual abuse of Rachel was perpetrated without Rachel’s consent,” according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit claims Ben Lippen School “repeatedly left Rachel unsupervised in the care of Defendant Herrington” when she stayed at the school into the late evenings for events like “movie night,” when “Rachel was sexually abused by Defendant Herrington over and over again,” the lawsuit says.

“This abuse included but was not limited to, fondling Rachel's breasts, squeezing Rachel's nipples, and grinding her vaginal area aggressively into Rachel’s upper thigh or on top of Rachel’s vaginal area..."

Opinion: Faculty at Asheville School must speak out after being asked to 'move forward'

The lawsuit faults Ben Lippen School for having had no policy for supervising or restricting interactions between faculty members and students; no policy against having students spend time or stay overnight in faculty dorm rooms; no policy preventing adult staff from being alone with students in school vehicles; no policy preventing adult staff from being alone with students in hotel rooms during overnight trips for school-sponsored events; and allowing some staff unrestricted use of an all-access passkey to dorm rooms without student consent, among other violations.

Related: Asheville School internal review finds no fault with Title IX sexual assault investigation; backlash

Howald, whose father was a doctor, attended other private schools until 10th grade, when she entered Ben Lippen as a day student. Her mother was a faculty member there. The majority of students at the school, then on Dryman Mountain off Ben Lippen School Road, lived on campus.

While she now lives in the New York City area and works in advertising, Howald said she has suffered significantly for more than 30 years since the abuse.

“There's not a single day of my life that I haven't been impacted by it. The shame of it and the PTSD aspect of it don’t ever go away,” Howald said.

Part of her decision to come forward after so long was the fear that Herrington was still working around children, Howald said. She filed a criminal complaint against Herrington with the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office in 2017, but detectives did not press charges, according to the incident report.

“One of the things that I've learned in all the nonprofit work that I've done around sexual violence issues is that a lot of perpetrators count on the fact that victims aren't going to say anything. And they are 1,000% correct in that assumption,” she said.

Another reason Howald said she is suing Herrington and Ben Lippen now is that she is legally able due to the two-year look back window.

For subscribers: Alleging sexual abuse by two teachers, Asheville School alum sues prestigious boarding school

The new law also enabled Walter Triplette, a graduate of Asheville School, to sue the private boarding school in West Asheville for what he says were years of sexual abuse by two male teachers. Triplette filed the lawsuit in December.

It came in the wake of allegations by Agnes Hill, now 17, that she was sexually assaulted by an older male student on the Asheville School campus in 2019 when she was a 15-year-old freshman. She has since left the school and filed a complaint with Asheville Police, who are investigating the incident.

For subscribers: Teen says sex assault happened at elite Asheville School

Ben Lippen School, also known as Columbia International University, was established in 1940 in Asheville as a missionary school. It is now a “Christ-centered” pre-K-12 school in Columbia, South Carolina, where it relocated in 1988.

The college is not named for a person, but rather is a Scottish phrase meaning “mountain of trust” according to its website.

“It has been anything but that for me,” Howald said.

Karen Chávez has been a journalist for 25 years, including as an editor and reporter for the past 20 years for the Asheville Citizen Times and USA TODAY Network. Email her at KChavez@CitizenTimes.com or follow on Twitter @KarenChavezACT.

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Ben Lippen School alum files lawsuit against teacher, school over alleged sexual abuse