Judge approves $2.25 million BOE settlement with estate of Jeremy Bell

By Audrey Stanton

A Fayette County circuit judge Thursday approved a $2.25 million settlement to be paid by insurers for the Fayette County Board of Education to the co-administrators of Jeremy Bell’s estate.

Bell died in November 1997 at the age of 12 during an overnight stay at a remote Thurmond cabin with Edgar Friedrichs, his elementary school principal.

In August of last year, a Fayette County jury convicted Friedrichs, 63, of felony murder in Bell’s death. Trial testimony showed the victim died after ingesting amitriptyline or chloroform, or both, administered by Friedrichs to erode his defenses to sexual assaults.

Friedrichs had already been convicted in 2002 of sexually molesting at least two other boys from the school.

He will spend the rest of his life in prison.

In 1999, Bell’s family filed a wrongful death suit against Friedrichs in Fayette County Circuit Court. They later amended the suit to include the school board, alleging the board neglected to protect Jeremy from the threat of child molestation. Roy Bell, Jeremy’s father, maintained the board had been given ample notice by parents, teachers and others that the convicted educator engaged in sexual abuse of boys, but ignored such reports.

Thursday, Bell and Jeremy’s mother, Kimberly Ball, co-administrators of the estate, agreed to settle any and all claims against the school board for $2,250,000. They also agreed to release the board from any future claims related to Jeremy’s death or injuries.

The family, in 2004, entered into a settlement to release Friedrichs from the suit in exchange for a $300,000 payout from Friedrichs’ homeowner’s insurance. That money, Ball testified Thursday, was used to pay for Jeremy’s funeral and medical expenses.

Ball also said some of the money from this settlement will be used to purchase an annuity for Bell’s half-sister.

Circuit Judge John Hatcher approved the settlement, to be paid to the general receiver of Fayette County by the school board’s insurance carriers, AIG and General Star. He also encouraged the estate co-administrators and others present who believe they have a claim to some of the money, including at least one of Roy Bell’s former attorneys, to mediate as soon as possible to determine how to distribute the funds.

The parties are likely to return to Hatcher’s courtroom for approval on the issue of distribution.

“This settlement is clearly in the estate’s best interest, and it resolves and puts an end to this sad, sad story,” Hatcher said.

The judge called the settlement “wise and appropriate.”

“It’s long time that we let these folks try to heal,” he added.

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After the hearing, Roy Bell said nothing could make up for the loss of his son.

“It could have been better,” he said. “ ... There’s more to it than a dollar.”

Bell said he’s more excited about U.S. Republican Congressman Michael G. Fitzpatrick’s recent introduction of the Jeremy Bell Act of 2006.

The act, HR 6411, is aimed at criminalizing the practice of “passing the trash” — a term used by the Pennsylvania congressman to refer to the practice of employers reassigning or transferring employees known to have engaged in criminal sex acts with minors within the course of employment.

Bell alleges Friedrichs was able to transfer to the Fayette County school system despite accusations of child molestation in the Pennsylvania school system where he began his career more than 30 years ago. The act, should it become law, would punish employers for knowingly allowing such transfers to happen.

“Right now, the worst thing they face is a civil suit,” Bell said.

The Jeremy Bell Act would create a new criminal violation for employers who facilitate the interstate transfer of an employee whom the employer had known to have engaged in sexual conduct with an underage individual, unless the employee had previously been convicted of the crime. The penalty for such a violation would be a fine or imprisonment of not more than five years, or both.

As a preventative measure directed specifically at schools, the act also would require schools to carry out background checks on all employees by undergoing a fingerprint-based check of the national crime information databases. This would encourage schools to use the more comprehensive national database as opposed to only state-gathered information sources.

Though the act will have to be reintroduced during the next session of Congress, Bell said he’s hopeful residents will let their elected representatives know they support it.

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The suit settled Thursday was not the first time Roy Bell had tried to seek judgment against the Fayette County Board of Education.

Last January, a jury in United States District Court determined Bell’s claims were barred because he failed to file the suit within the two-year statute of limitations. Attorneys for the board convinced the federal jury any evidence Bell had gathered with the aid of a private investigator was known to him before April 15, 2001, although his action wasn’t filed until exactly two years later. So the rest of his case was thrown out of federal court.

In a related case filed in U.S. District Court in 2004, Michael Pascocciello and his mother, Carolyn, settled their lawsuit against the Fayette County Board of Education for a reported $450,000. They claimed the board failed to protect Michael from the threat of child molestation.

Pascocciello was the sole surviving student on the fateful 1997 fishing trip with Friedrichs.

The Pascocciellos also sued Friedrichs’ previous employer, the Interboro School District in Pennsylvania, and one of its principals who gave Friedrichs a letter of recommendation for the job he took when he moved to West Virginia. That portion of the suit has been transferred to federal court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Online court documents indicate that case has been set for a settlement conference on Feb. 2, 2007.

— E-mail: bnaudrey@register-herald.com

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