$1 Million Settlement for Third Former Student Abused by Marysville Teacher in the 1980s
Won by Washington Law Center.
Washington Law Center attorney Ashton Dennis secured a $1 million settlement from the Marysville School District on behalf of a male former student who said art teacher Kurt Hollstein sexually assaulted him on school grounds starting in 1981, when the victim was approximately 14 years old.
What happened
Kurt Hollstein joined the Marysville School District as an art teacher, later adding cheerleading adviser and then athletic director to his titles. For at least two decades, no parent, student, or administrator filed a complaint against him. What came to light only in civil litigation beginning in 2021 was that Hollstein had allegedly been using that access to groom and sexually assault students since at least the early 1980s.
The third claimant to come forward was a man who had attended school in the district in 1981, when he was approximately 14 years old. According to his tort claim, Hollstein's pattern started the same way it had with earlier victims: befriending the student and inviting him to stay after school. From there, Hollstein allegedly progressed to frequent sexual assaults on school grounds over the course of one to two years. The abuse went unreported for decades.
The man did not learn that others had experienced the same thing until he read news coverage of a May 2022 settlement in which the district agreed to pay $3.5 million to two female former students, both represented by Ashton Dennis of Washington Law Center. He contacted the firm and filed a tort claim against the district in June 2022.
Dennis negotiated a settlement of $1 million, which the district finalized in November 2022. The district's insurance carrier covered the full amount. No district operating funds were used. The client said he chose to settle rather than litigate in part to avoid prolonged proceedings that could drain resources away from current students. He also said he hoped that coming forward publicly would encourage other men who had been harmed to do the same.
The settlement brought the total paid by the district's insurers across all three claimants to $4.5 million. Hollstein left the Marysville district in June 2021 after being placed on administrative leave following the first lawsuit. He was not named as a defendant in the civil proceedings.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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