Update: Hilton Head family sues district over ex-teacher's behavior
Update: 2 p.m. Dec. 9
The Beaufort County School District has not responded to the lawsuit, according to staff of the Beaufort County Court of Common Pleas. The district has until Dec. 16 to do so, one month after the suit was served, the court said Wednesday.
District attorney Duke Highfield of Charleston has not returned repeated calls for comment. District spokesman Jim Foster said Dec. 9 he was told the response was filed Monday. He said he does not know why it is not in court records.
Our original story continues below.
A Hilton Head Island family has sued the Beaufort County School District over a former teacher's inappropriate conduct with the family's son in 2013.
The family also alleges the district knew of an illicit relationship between Margaret Ann LaMantia and the then-16-year-old student, but permitted the long-term Spanish substitute at Hilton Head Island High School to serve as an assistant wrestling coach, allowing her contact with many other male students, according to the lawsuit.
The district failed to determine whether employees "had proclivities towards deviant, prurient and lascivious interests," states the complaint, filed last month in Beaufort County court.
District spokesman Jim Foster said Tuesday the substitute teacher never served as an assistant coach, and he could not explain that contradiction. The district's attorney, Duke Highfield of Charleston, did not respond to a call for comment Tuesday afternoon.
Foster added that LaMantia's termination on Dec. 10, the day she was arrested, came as soon as the district learned of allegations against her. The district responded to the suit on Monday, though those documents were not available online.
Several other claims in the lawsuit -- which the district responded to Monday -- are "completely false," superintendent Jeff Moss said.
The victim's family alleges the district was negligent in hiring, retaining and supervising LaMantia and other employees and broke its own policies related to inappropriate conduct with students, adding eight other instances have been reported since 2007 in which teachers had inappropriate relationships with students.
In one instance, school psychologist Megan Michelle Snipes was arrested Dec. 20, 2013, and accused of sexual conduct with a student she was counseling.
That case is pending.
LaMantia, 25, was sentenced in August 2014 to up to six years in prison for sending the victim a nude photograph of herself, buying marijuana from him and kissing, groping and smoking with the teen.
She was released after four months, according to the S.C. Department of Corrections.
The victim, now 18, and his mother are represented by attorneys Olin McDougall and William Bacon IV of Beaufort, who did not respond to calls for comment Tuesday.
The lawsuit stems from a brief relationship between the victim and LaMantia during her first year with the district. She and the victim exchanged numbers just before Thanksgiving 2013 and then texted and used the Snapchat app between Nov. 29 and 30.
In one instance, LaMantia sent the student a photo of her genitalia because he "was persistent and kept asking for it," she told law enforcement.
Back at school, the two continued to talk, sometimes about marijuana and sex, and LaMantia eventually asked the student to buy her marijuana. She then picked him up from his job and spent several hours driving around the island. They briefly kissed, and the student touched LaMantia over her clothes, but she refused to engage in further sexual activity, according to the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office.
The victim revealed the relationship to his parents after he was fired from his job for smelling of marijuana, according to the Sheriff's Office.
A phone number could not be found for LaMantia, who moved to Bryan, Ohio, before her sentencing and she could not be reached Tuesday through her criminal defense attorney.
She is not named in the lawsuit, filed Nov. 4.
As a teacher at Hilton Head High, she wrote on the education technology website Edmodo that she was an assistant wrestling coach and former nanny, a CrossFit enthusiast and occasional marketer and event planner for her gym.
Follow reporter Rebecca Lurye on Twitter at twitter.com/IPBG_Rebecca.
Related content:
- Hilton Head High substitute accused of inappropriate acts with student, December 11, 2013
- Sheriff's Office report: Island teacher admitted inappropriate behavior with student, December 14, 2013
- Former Hilton Head teacher sentenced to 6 years for inappropriate behavior with student, August 28, 2014
This story was originally published December 8, 2015 at 10:14 AM with the headline "Update: Hilton Head family sues district over ex-teacher's behavior."