$3 million settlement announced in Dudley High School sex offenses lawsuit

Mar. 27—The Guilford County Board of Education's insurer is paying $3 million to settle a lawsuit brought against the district by two former Dudley High School students who said a former teacher assistant sexually abused them and the district failed to protect them.

The former students alleged Christopher Arnell Holland, a former teacher's assistant for students with special needs and former boys basketball coach at Dudley, carried out lengthy, predatory sexual relationships with each of them when they were minors. They alleged he had sex with them at school and at his home, sometimes taking them off campus during the school day.

Holland, their complaint argued, should not have been hired to work at Dudley in September 2014. He should not have been allowed to give students rides or spend time alone with them. And he should not have been allowed to continue on at the school, amid various concerns raised about him, up until his resignation and arrest in March 2020.

One of the victims attempted suicide that same month, according to the complaint.

Holland was convicted in May 2023 of two counts of statutory rape of a child 15 years old or younger; two counts of statutory sex offense involving a child 15 years old or younger; and three counts of sex act with a student, according to the Guilford County District Attorney's Office. He was sentenced to between 77 and 113 years in prison.

The amount of the settlement was limited by the amount of the board's insurance, according to Martin Ramey, one of the attorneys for the former students. The two victims, he said, will each receive a portion of the settlement, with the rest going to court costs and to pay the attorneys.

He and Mary Charles Amerson, another attorney for the former students, emphasized that Holland assaulted their clients repeatedly during their times in high school. They attended from 2014-2018 and from 2016-2020, respectively. One of the students was a special needs student.

"To go through the sheer hell they went through is worth more than $3 million," Ramey said.

The settlement of the case did not come with any admission of guilt or liability by the Board of Education, according to Ramey. The News & Record reached out to the district for comment but did not receive a response.

In their complaint, the former Dudley students also alleged that Kenneth Ferguson, a physical education teacher and boys basketball coach at Dudley at the time, knew about Holland's behavior and also repeatedly groped and sexted one of the suing students.

Ferguson "fervently denies all claims made against him in the lawsuit" and is pleased the claims against him have been permanently dismissed, his attorney Joshua Bennett said in an email to the News & Record. Ferguson has not been charged with any crimes, he said.

Ramey said his clients dropped their legal claims against both the Board of Education and Ferguson simultaneously, due to the negotiated settlement with the board. The board could have remained liable for negligence claims against Ferguson if they hadn't negotiated to have his claims dismissed, too, Ramey said.

Ramey said Holland, who is in prison, is the only remaining defendant following the settlement.

Previously, in their complaint, the former students also named a series of other people they alleged should have done more to prevent their victimization, either by preventing Holland from being hired, or by better investigating or addressing his behavior while at the school.

Those people were former assistant principal James Moore, former principal Rodney Wilds, former assistant principal Tanya Wingate, former principal Jesse Pratt, former Dudley High School School Resource Officer Joey Lance, and former Dudley High School athletics director Artimuss Wade.

Martin said his clients dropped the claims against Wade based on what Wade said in a later deposition.

The claims related to the Dudley administrators were previously dismissed as redundant to the claim against the Guilford County Board of Education, Martin said, and the claim against Lance was previously dismissed on grounds relating to the scope of his investigations and his role as an SRO with the Greensboro Police Department.

The former students' complaint pointed to a lengthy list of what they said the district and former Dudley leaders should have responded to as red flags.

One instance, they said, was a disclosure Holland made on his job application, in response to one of the questions on it. Holland, they said, disclosed that an allegation against him from a minor student at a previous school where he worked had caused an investigation with the potential to result in his foster children being removed from his home.

In the same paragraph of the complaint, they argued that "a reasonable hiring administrator would find this disclosure very serious and potentially disqualifying in terms of verifying and scrutinizing Holland's candidacy."

The Dudley administrators denied the contents of that paragraph of the complaint in their motion to dismiss.The Board of Education, in its motion to dismiss, stated, "It is admitted that a hiring administrator would be expected to inquire further regarding Defendant Holland's statement on a his job application that there had been an investigation involving his foster child. It is admitted that a hiring administrator could potentially be disciplined for failing to meet expectations in the hiring process."

Another instance the former students pointed to came during the 2015-16 school year, when, according to the complaint, a teacher reported to Wilds that a minor student had told her that Holland asked a student for oral sex via text message.

Instead, according to the complaint, Wilds and Wingate investigated by speaking with Holland and by holding a meeting with several teachers at the school. They did not, the complaint said, speak with the accusing student or that student's parent. Nor did they attempt to search Holland's phone or to report the matter to law enforcement, according to the complaint.

In their joint motion to dismiss, the former Dudley school administrators denied that any of them were aware of that allegation as it was stated in the complaint, though the administrators said Wilds and Wingate did investigate "certain allegations."

In its response, the Board of Education stated that "there are conflicting accounts related to this allegation," leaving the board without enough information to draw a conclusion. Wilds did not report any allegation about Holland to the district's human resources, the Board of Education said.

The plaintiffs further charged that the Board of Education "did not provide training to students in how to recognize grooming much less what to do about it and who to report it to" and that it had provided "little to no training for principals" on what to do with Title IX, a provision of federal law that protects students from discrimination based on sex, including sexual harassment, in schools that receive federal funding.

The Board of Education denied those allegations in its motion to dismiss.

Jessie.Pounds@greensboro.com

336-373-7002

@JessiePounds

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