The family of a New Bedford teenager killed in a crash in January 2024 is suing the school district where he was a student, accusing officials there of ignoring ongoing abuse he suffered at the hands of a former school security guard.
The estate of 18-year-old Jacob Pothier recently filed a wrongful death lawsuit in federal court in Boston and named the Greater New Bedford Regional Vocational Technical School District and numerous officials as defendants.
Among the named defendants is Kathleen Martins, a former security guard at the school, and accused by the family of grooming Pothier and sexually abusing him beginning when he was 15.
On Jan. 5, 2024, Pothier died after being ejected from a Honda Accord belonging to Martins after the car crashed near Padanaram Bridge in Dartmouth at about 10:35 p.m. Martins survived the crash, and mini Smirnoff liquor bottles were found inside the car, according to lawyers for Pothier’s family. The lawsuit doesn’t say who was driving.
The 25-count suit seeks nearly $10 million in damages.
Greg Manousos, an attorney for the school, said it disagreed with the accusations leveled in the suit.
“The School took immediate action once it became aware of the alleged inappropriate conduct,” Manousos said in a brief statement. “At the time of the fatal car crash, the individual had not been employed by the School for nearly a year.”
Martins, 45, was hired in August 2021, the same month Pothier began his freshman year at the school, and the suit claims the abuse began the day he started there, with Martins providing alcohol, marijuana, clothing, jewelry, food and money in exchange for sex.
The suit claims school officials should have known about the abuse in the fall of 2021, with Pothier showing the “classic telltale signs” of grooming, according to a letter sent on June 5, 2024, to Superintendent Michael Watson as well as the other city officials, including Mayor Jonathan Mitchell from the family’s lawyer, Scott Lang.
Sometime between August 2021 and February 2023, a New Bedford police officer found Martins and Pothier in the Pine Grove Cemetery (which is across the street from the school) in Martins’ car, the lawsuit states.
More than a year after Martins was hired, in February 2023, the district and school administrators “became aware” of a video depicting Martins and Pothier engaged in a sex act, the lawsuit states.
When Pothier was called to the main office to discuss the video, however, school administrators “interrogated and threatened” him, telling him he could face discipline at school or even criminal charges for possessing the video, according to the lawsuit.
Pothier was not treated as a victim, but rather as a perpetrator, the suit claims. His treatment was counter to that of female victims of abuse at the school, who the suit claims were “treated as victims and supported as such, including with an investigation and discipline for their perpetrators.”
In the wake of the video, school officials filed a report with the Department of Children and Families, but then failed to follow up with the department when the abuse continued, according to the suit.
After the video surfaced, Martins was placed on administrative leave. She resigned in March 2023 without an investigation into her conduct, according to the suit.
But even after her firing, Martins continued to harass and stalk Pothier, according to the suit, despite his attempts to distance himself from her.
After the car crash in Dartmouth, Pothier was taken to St. Luke’s Hospital in New Bedford and pronounced dead. Martins sustained life-threatening injuries in the crash but survived.
By the summer of 2024, Martins had returned to work at SouthCoast Behavioral Health Center, according to the suit.
The suit claims Pothier was not Martins’ only victim, and there was a history of “teacher-student grooming, sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and/or sexual violence” at the school.
But officials regularly treated boys who were abused as perpetrators, not victims, according to the suit, a pattern that extended to Pothier.
The suit filed on April 4 also demands a jury trial. Beyond Manousos’ public statement, the school has not responded to the suit, nor have any of the other defendants. The defendants are expected to file a response to the lawsuit by April 29, according to court filings.
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