A Las Vegas mother has settled with her local school district after her 15-year-old daughter was forced to memorize and read out a sexually-explicit monologue in front of her theater class.
Candra and her husband, Terrell Evans, filed a $50,000 lawsuit against the Clark County School District and superintendent Dr. Jesus Jara last year, alleging they engaged in ‘unlawful grooming and abuse of a minor’ over the assignment which they characterized as ‘pornographic material.’
They say their unnamed daughter, a student at the Las Vegas Academy of the Arts, was made to perform the monologue written by a fellow student – in which a narrator came out as lesbian and talked about not liking ‘d**ks.’
The passage was so lewd that Ms. Evans’ microphone was cut off as she read it aloud during a school district board meeting last spring, and she was admonished for violating the board’s decorum rules.
During deposition, school administrators also acknowledged that the content was inappropriate, with one saying it ‘was not something that I felt should have been there,’ and another testifying: ‘I do remember the first time I read it, being in shock.
‘What was written was not appropriate to be read and performed in a school setting… And so it crossed the boundary,’ the administrator said, according to the American Center for Law and Justice, which represented the Evans family in this case.
District officials later decided to settle the suit for $25,000 and the understanding that the district would train Las Vegas Academy of the Arts teachers about its regulations. The district would also not admit any liability in the settlement, KLAS reports.
The Evans’ had alleged that their teenage daughter’s theater teacher, Kelly Hawes, ordered her students in March 2022 to write monologues, which their classmates would then memorize and read aloud before the class.
The monologue their daughter was given involved a woman telling her ex-boyfriend she was a lesbian and describing how she never liked his penis or having sex with him.
It ‘contained explicit, obscene and sexually violent material,’ according to the lawsuit, which also claimed that Hawes ‘helped the other student edit their obscenely violent pornographic monologue knowing that it would then be provided to another student to read, memorize and perform in front of the class.’
Ms. Evans said she learned of the assignment a month after it was performed.
‘I didn’t believe that the teacher would ever give a student something like this, so it was more shock,’ she said of her reaction.
‘Having to memorize that and to read that, I thought it was just so inappropriate.’
The worried mother then raised concerns about the assignment with school administrators, one of whom told her the district would handle the issue.
‘[The administrator] empathized with them that he would be very upset if he found out that assignment had been given to his daughter,’ the lawsuit read. ‘He told them that plaintiffs were handling the issue better than he would and that it would not be swept under the rug. He promised he would make sure that it never happened again.
‘Further, he agreed that [the teacher] should have stopped [the teenager] as soon as she heard the first line of the monologue.’
At that point, Evans agreed to let the administrator discuss the assignment with her daughter, but only if a female faculty member was present.
But when the meeting eventually did take place, only the male administrator was there, she claimed.
The parents then called for another meeting with more staff members, who then ‘defended the obscene monologue and then blamed [the student] for reading it, stating that she could have said ‘no,’ but she didn’t.’
The lawsuit said some faculty members later ‘backtracked and admitted that the assignment was not appropriate for the classroom.’
‘At any point, Hawes could have prevented this pornographic material from getting into the hands of children, but she refused,’ the lawsuit said. ‘When confronted about this, [Las Vegas Academy of the Arts Principal Scott Walker] and CCSD did nothing.’
‘I wanted to hear somebody tell me, “Oh my gosh, this was so inappropriate. We’re going to fix this. This shouldn’t have happened,”‘ Evans explained to KLAS.
‘But I didn’t hear that.’
Eventually, the Evanses decided to escalate the issue to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, who told them they would need to file a report with the Clark County School District Police.
The lawsuit claimed that the family did file a report, but it was falsified by an officer who ‘conspired with others.’ Lawyers for the district later argued that no crime was ever committed.
Discouraged by the lack of response, Evans ultimately brought her complaints to a school board meeting, when she tried to read aloud from the monologue before being silenced.
As she began to read, her microphone cut and board trustee Evelyn Garcia Morales told her off for using the profane language.
‘That you for your comment,’ Morales said. ‘Forgive me, we are not using profanity. This is a public meeting; I ask for decorum.’
‘If you don’t want me to read it to you, what was it like for my 15-year-old daughter to have to memorize pornographic material,’ Evans shot back.
She has since praised the settlement, saying she thinks ‘kids are going to be a lot safer from teachers like this one.
‘In the end, what’s most important is that my daughter can walk away from this proud because she made a change. She made a difference.’
Evans noted that her daughter was having a ‘difficult time’ after she was forced to read the monologue, ‘and we feel [the teacher] took advantage of a 15 year old who just wanted to be a good student and get good grades.
‘Our daughter never wanted to be in the public spotlight for something like this, just like most teens would not want that, so this was all very overwhelming and not an easy journey for her,’ she said.
‘We are happy to say, she’s doing much better now.’
The girl graduated from high school with a weighted GPA of 4.625 and as an AP Scholar with honors.
She is now in her first year of college, and keeps busy by writing, singing and producing her own songs.