All-Female Jury Awards $9.3 Million After Dallas Prep School Expelled Student Abused by Her Teacher

In late November 2009, a police officer found a 34-year-old Episcopal School of Dallas history teacher, J. Nathan Campbell, alone in a parked car with a 16-year-old student. What came to light in the months that followed was that Campbell had spent roughly seven months grooming and then sexually abusing the girl, who had been enrolled at the elite Dallas private school since kindergarten.

School administrators initially told the student's parents that the institution stood behind their daughter and would protect her privacy. That promise lasted about two months. On January 27, 2010, a school official gave the girl's father an ultimatum: withdraw her voluntarily or face formal expulsion. The school's position, as one administrator put it in a damaging email later introduced at trial, was that they did not want the student 'haunting our hallways with her sad story.'

Attorney Charla Aldous, along with co-counsel Brent Walker and Cyndy Goosen, took on the family's case. At trial, Aldous argued that the school had ignored repeated warning signs. Prosecutors had recovered more than 7,000 text messages that Campbell sent to the student using a school-issued iPhone. A hotel reservation booked on a school credit card also surfaced during discovery. The plaintiff's psychology expert testified that Campbell's conduct followed a classic 'grooming' pattern common to sexual predators, and that the school had ample opportunity to intervene.

The jury, six women, deliberated and returned a verdict of $9.3 million on September 21, 2011. The award included $8.6 million in compensatory damages and $700,000 in punitive damages, reflecting the jury's finding of gross negligence. It was the second-largest negligence verdict in Texas that year, ranking among the state's top 25 verdicts according to Texas Lawyer. The jury rejected the school's argument that the relationship had been consensual, treating it as what the evidence showed: sexual abuse of a minor by an adult in a position of authority.

On the criminal side, Campbell pleaded guilty to sexual assault of a child. He received 10 years of deferred adjudication and is required to register as a sex offender for life. A second charge of improper relationship with a student was dropped as part of the plea. The civil case was subsequently resolved for an undisclosed amount after the school indicated plans to appeal.