Court Digest

West Virginia
Lawsuit settled over widespread abuse of students at shuttered boarding school
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — A second lawsuit that alleged widespread sexual, physical and mental abuse at a now-closed West Virginia boarding school for troubled youths has been settled for about $50 million.

Attorneys for 32 plaintiffs described what happened to children over decades at the former Miracle Meadows School in Salem as gruesome and unfathomable.

“No one would believe it in a movie,” Jesse Forbes, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs, said in a telephone interview Wednesday.

The lawsuit had named the school’s co-founder and its operating entities. Among the abuse alleged by the former students, who are now adults, included being chained and shackled to beds, being kept in tiny isolation rooms for long periods, routine beatings, sexual assault, starvation, and being forced to perform manual labor. The children at times were not given toilet paper, requiring them to remain in their own filth or use their clothing to clean themselves.

“This institution actually had a handcuffing policy and issued handcuffs to the staff members for kids as young as 6 years old,” Forbes said.

An earlier lawsuit filed on behalf of 29 students at the school was settled in 2020 for $52 million. After the first settlement, the Legislature changed a law increasing the statute of limitations for abuse claims to age 36, prompting the second lawsuit, Forbes said.

The latest settlement reached this month will be paid out by insurance carriers, Forbes said. Some other claims remain pending.

Attorney Guy D’Andrea said the latest lawsuit included allegations that some children ages 7 to 12 contracted sexually transmitted diseases from staff members.

“We actually had two clients who got pregnant by a staff member and were forced to have abortions,” D’Andrea said. “We thought it couldn’t get any worse for these children. For some of them, it was.”

Miracle Meadows was founded in 1988 and operated as a ministry of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. According to the lawsuit, the school was closed in 2014 after a student drank a cleaning product and was rushed to a hospital where she begged the medical staff for help, prompting authorities to investigate the claims. The school’s state-recognized education status was revoked in August 2014.

Susan Gayle Clark, the school’s co-founder, was sentenced in 2016 to six months in jail and five years on probation after pleading guilty to child neglect charges.

In the five years leading up to the school’s closing, Miracle Meadows had been named in more than a dozen complaints of abuse and mistreatment. Such complaints to the state are typically forwarded to the local prosecutor.

But at the time, Harrison County assistant prosecutor Patricia Dettori said substantiating the complaints over the years had been difficult, in part because many students were from out of state. The children either were taken out of school or recanted the allegations, while many of the school staff members were from other countries on religious work visas and would abruptly leave if accused of wrongdoing, she said.


New Mexico
Judge clears way for a civil case to proceed against Alec Baldwin and ‘Rust’ producers
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A New Mexico judge on Wednesday rejected a request by Alec Baldwin ‘s attorneys to dismiss a civil lawsuit by three “Rust” crew members who allege cost-cutting endangered the cast and crew as the actor-producer skipped his own safety training.

Chief District Judge Bryan Biedscheid also declined to delay proceedings despite arguments by Baldwin’s legal team that doing to so would put their client at risk of self-incrimination since prosecutors have yet to decide whether to refile criminal charges against him over the fatal on-set shooting of a cinematographer.

Attorney Robert Schwartz told the judge there would be nothing to prevent prosecutors from using evidence gleaned from discovery in the civil case against Baldwin in the criminal case, if charges are refiled. As an example, he pointed to any interpretation of Baldwin’s production contract and what authority he had over decision making.

Schwartz said the court is putting Baldwin in an “unfortunate position.”

“No protective order can protect him against that. It just can’t happen,” Schwartz said. “So what’s going to happen is Mr. Baldwin is going to assert his 5th Amendment rights and the plaintiffs are not going to get any discovery in the meantime.”

The judge disagreed, saying he would be mindful of Baldwin’s rights.

Prosecutors have been mum about when a decision will be announced, but in asking for the civil case to be delayed, Schwartz indicated Wednesday that it could some within the next few weeks.

Baldwin, a coproducer of the film, was pointing a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a rehearsal on the film’s set outside Santa Fe when the gun went off, killing her and wounding director Joel Souza.

The 2021 shooting resulted in a series of civil lawsuits centered on accusations that the defendants were lax with safety standards. The cases have including wrongful death claims filed by members of Hutchins’ family. Baldwin and other defendants have disputed accusations they were lax with safety standards.

The plaintiffs in the case heard Wednesday say Baldwin and the other producers cut corners, ignored reports of multiple unscripted firearm discharges and rushed to finish the film while being understaffed. They also say they suffered mental anguish and emotional distress by witnessing the shooting.

Baldwin’s attorneys argue that none of the plaintiffs were physically injured and should not be allowed to recover any damages. They contend that gun safety was the responsibility of others — not Baldwin — and that his authority as a producer was limited to making suggestions on the script and casting.

A separate settlement to resolve allegations of workplace safety violations was finalized in March by New Mexico workplace safety regulators and Rust Movie Productions. Following its review, the state issued a scathing narrative of safety failures in violation of standard industry protocols, including testimony that production managers took limited or no action to address two misfires on set before the fatal shooting.

Regulators also documented gun-safety complaints from crew members that went unheeded and said weapons specialists were not allowed to make decisions about additional safety training.


California
Man convicted of killing Kristin Smart attacked  and hospitalized
COALINGA, Calif. (AP) — The man convicted of killing Kristin Smart, who vanished from a California college campus more than 25 years ago, was hospitalized after he was attacked in state prison, his lawyer said Wednesday.

Paul Flores was taken Wednesday from Pleasant Valley State Prison in Coalinga to an outside hospital where he was in serious condition, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

The department didn’t confirm that Flores had been attacked, with a spokeswoman saying via email that the circumstances surrounding his injury were under investigation and details wouldn’t immediately be released.

His attorney, Harold Mesick, said he was notified by corrections officials that Flores was attacked Wednesday, although he didn’t have any details.

“I just pray for his recovery,” Mesick said.

Flores had only been transferred to the Central Valley prison last week from North Kern State Prison, Mesick said.

North Kern is where prisoners are received and processed before being assigned to another facility.

Flores was sentenced in March to 25 years to life in prison for killing Smart.

The 19-year-old disappeared from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo on the state’s scenic Central Coast over Memorial Day weekend in 1996.

Her remains have never been found, but she was declared legally dead in 2002.

Prosecutors maintained that Flores, now 46, killed Smart during an attempted rape on May 25, 1996, in his dorm room at the university, where both were first-year students. He was the last person seen with Smart as he walked her home from an off-campus party.
Flores was arrested in 2021 along with his father, who was accused of helping to hide Smart’s body. Flores was convicted of first-degree murder last October.

A separate jury acquitted Ruben Flores, 81, of being an accessory after the fact.

South Carolina
Mom gets life for stabbing newborn and throwing baby in a river in 1992
YORK, S.C. (AP) — A 50-year-old woman was sentenced Wednesday to life in prison for killing her newborn daughter, whose stabbed body was found in a plastic bag in a South Carolina river in 1992.

A York County jury convicted Stacy Michelle Rabon of homicide by child abuse earlier this month. She was charged with her baby’s death two years ago when her DNA sample taken in a 2019 drug arrest matched the DNA from the infant.

Rabon will be eligible for parole starting in 2031 because she was sentenced under the law in 1992 which allowed for shorter sentences for serious convictions.

Rabon told investigators she delivered the baby in a van by the Catawba River near Rock Hill, but then gave it up to a couple because she didn’t want to keep her and never saw the child again.

Prosecutors said she made up that story after she was arrested. They said the infant was found wrapped in sheets inside a plastic bag in the river in August 1992 and was stabbed at least 50 times. Investigators couldn’t determine if the baby died from the stab wounds or suffocated in the bag.

“Stacy Rabon threw her baby into that cold Catawba River — never looking back, abandoning her, keeping her secret for 29 years,” said York County Sheriff’s deputy Lanelle Day, the detective who made the DNA link.

Rabon asked for mercy. She said her decision to give the child up to people she didn’t know haunts her.

“I can’t think of anything but her face,” Rabon said. “Think about her everything, growing up -- all these things were taken from her because I made poor decisions.”

Circuit Court Judge Bill McKinnon said the life sentence was appropriate because the victim was so vulnerable.

“A newborn comes into this world looking for its parents to protect it,” McKinnon said. “This baby was stabbed more than 50 times.”

Rabon’s lawyer said she is a much different person than the teen who had the baby more than 30 years ago. She came into court Wednesday in a wheelchair and needs surgeries.

The community called the girl “Baby Angel Hope” and buried her in 1992.