Española schools to pay $4M to settle lawsuit
Deal reached over sexual abuse claims as former teacher rejects plea deal
The Española school district has agreed to pay more than $4 million to settle the second of three lawsuits alleging a former teacher sexually abused fourth-grade students about a decade ago.
News of the settlement amount, first reported by the Albuquerque Journal, comes about a year after another civil case involving 61-year-old Gary Gregor was settled for $3.2 million. A third complaint against the Española man, who also had taught in Santa Fe schools, was filed in September, months after Gregor had been arrested on 13 felony criminal charges accusing him of rape, kidnapping and molestation of several female students at Fairview Elementary School in Española.
Gregor has been held in the Rio Arriba County jail in Tierra Ama- rilla since May.
He appeared in the state District Court in Santa Fe on Monday for a hearing in the criminal case, in which he rejected a plea deal.
His case is expected to go to trial in January.
In all three civil suits, the former students accuse Gregor of abusing them physically, sexually, mentally and emotionally. While he was a teacher at Fairview from 2006-09, the suits say, Gregor made girls sit on his lap or close to him while he fondled them, and he sometimes would “nap” on the floor with a girl, rubbing his body against hers.
Gregor would buy gifts for girls, the suits allege, and also would often keep girls locked in the classroom with him, alone, at lunchtime.
Gregor has faced repeated allegations of abusing students since the mid-1990s, first in Utah, then in Montana, but he continued to teach young students for about 15 years after the first accusations emerged.
Santa Fe Public Schools hired Gregor as a substitute teacher in 1998 and hired him as a full-time teacher in 2000. He resigned from the former Agua Fría Elementary
School in 2004, facing the threat of dismissal, after concerns were raised about his behavior toward female students during a field trip. In 2005, he was hired by the Española district. After one girl’s parents reported concerns to police about Gregor’s behavior toward their daughter in 2009, the Española district placed him on administrative leave. In 2010, the state Public Education Department refused to renew his teaching license, saying he would never teach in New Mexico again. He made an unsuccessful appeal in 2011.
Information from The Santa Fe New Mexican was used in this report.