WAYNE – A couple is suing the Wayne County Board of Education after they claim it failed to protect their son from being molested by a teacher and a teacher's aide.
Lisa Thacker and David Martin Thacker were also named as defendants in the suit.
During the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 school years, Seth Farley was a student at Wayne Middle School where Lisa Thacker and David Thacker were his teacher and aide, according to a complaint filed Feb. 26 in Wayne Circuit Court.
Kimberly Farley and Mark Farley claim their son is autistic and was in a self-contained classroom with the defendants.
The Farleys claim Lisa Thacker, who was then known as Lisa Curnutte, was cheating on her husband with David Thacker, who was also cheating on his spouse with Lisa Thacker.
The defendants were unsupervised and locked the door to their work area and displayed inappropriate displaces of public affection during their job and pornography was found on the classroom computer by other employees, which was all reported to the administration.
The Farleys claim during the time their son was in the room with the Thackers, he was sexually molested in the classroom.
The Farleys did not know what was happening to their son until he began to display inappropriate sexual behavior and was telling his family and his doctors and case workers what the defendants did to him, according to the suit.
The plaintiffs claim the board owed a duty to Seth Farley to protect him from harm and failed to do so,
The board also did not terminate Lisa Thacker and David Thacker's employment, and instead, allowed them to resign, according to the suit.
The plaintiffs claim the board also failed to report the alleged abuse to the proper authorities, as required by law.
Seth Farley suffered trauma, embarrassment, humiliation, annoyance, confusion and irreparable harm due to the defendants' actions, according to the suit.
The Farleys are seeking compensatory and punitive damages in the amount of $6 million. They are being represented by Cynthia Evans of Cynthia E. Evans-Attorney at Law.
The case is assigned to Circuit Judge James Young.
Wayne Circuit Court case number: 15-C-037