Man sexually abused by city school officer awarded $2.2M

A federal court jury has awarded $2.2 million to a man who was sexually assaulted more than 20 years ago by a Pittsburgh Public Schools police officer.

Shawn Logan, 33, was 12 years old when Robert Lellock assaulted him in 1998 at Arthur J. Rooney Middle School in Brighton Heights.

Lellock is now in prison after being convicted in 2013 of abusing boys at the school. He sexually assaulted Mr. Logan at least 20 times in a janitor’s closet.

Mr. Logan was one of several victims Lellock molested. He sued Lellock, the school district, the school board and several officials in 2015 in U.S. District Court. The other defendants were dismissed, leaving Lellock as the sole defendant.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette does not typically name victims of sexual assault, but is doing so in this case with permission from Mr. Logan’s lawyers.

The trial began Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Joy Flowers Conti, who instructed the jury that she had already determined that Lellock was liable for Mr. Logan’s suffering. The question was how much money would he get for that suffering?

The jury decided $2.2 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

Mr. Logan, a father of six who still lives in the Pittsburgh area, said he has suffered a lifetime of psychological and other problems from the abuse, including depression, anxiety, drug abuse and an inability to be intimate.

As he had at Lellock’s criminal trial in 2013, he testified about the assaults in detail, saying the officer pulled him out of class in uniform, took him to a janitor’s closet and molested him over the span of two months in 1998.

He never told anyone until years later because he said he was afraid and because he said Lellock threatened him and his mother.

Asked by his lawyer, Cynthia Howell, how he felt at the time, he said, “Angry and humiliated. Scared. Confused. A lot of mixed feelings.”

The abuse ended when Mr. Logan was expelled after he said he brought a knife to school to defend himself from Lellock. “I had thoughts of stabbing him in that room,” he told the jury.

He said he turned to drugs in later years and has since been in and out of rehab and counseling programs in an effort to cope. “[The abuse] took away part of my innocence,” he said. “It just ruined who I am.”

Lellock appeared at the trial with a prison guard escort, but had no lawyer and asked only a few questions. He was sued in his individual capacity, but it’s not clear if he has any assets to pay the damages.