Jury Awards Millions To Former Students Abused By South Bay Teacher: Report

ROLLING HILLS, CA — A group of woman who accused a longtime South Bay high school teacher of grooming and sexually abusing them in the 1980s were awarded more than $13 million by a jury this week, according to a report by the Los Angeles Times.

Details of the abuse first came to light after the former Rolling Hills High School students sued Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District in 2022, accusing school administrators of failing to stop the abuse, according to the report.

After a four-week trial this year, a jury found that district administrators were negligent and failed to prevent the women from being abused by English teacher and baseball coach Garry Poe, according to the report.

The trial was centered around an annual European trip that Poe chaperoned. These trips were one of many instances in which Poe flirted with students, groomed them and then sexually abused them, the women testified during the trial, according to the Los Angele Times.

“Every night I was scared,” one women testified, according to the report. "At the time, she was 18 years old and said she was overwhelmed. During the trip, she said, “I was in survival mode.”

Read more from the Los Angeles Times.