4 Iowa school districts failed to report coach's misconduct, lawyers say in announcing settlement with victim

Anna Spoerre
The Des Moines Register

Accusations of misconduct by an Iowa teacher and coach spanned across four schools over the course of a decade, according to a recently settled lawsuit.

Four Iowa school districts were named in the civil lawsuit settled for $650,000, according to a Tuesday news release by attorneys for the plaintiff, a minor victim of sexual abuse. Court documents confirming the settlement were not immediately available in Iowa's online system.

Kyle Ewinger, 41, a teacher and football coach at Sibley-Ocheyedan in northwest Iowa, was fired after the district superintendent found Ewinger sleeping on an air mattress in his classroom next to a 10-year-old in October 2015, according to the lawsuit. 

A criminal complaint says the boy reported Ewinger had performed a sex act on him. 

Before he was fired from the Sibley-Ocheyedan school district, Ewinger taught at the Sioux City, Akron-Westfield and Mediapolis school districts. All four districts were named as defendants in the civil lawsuit and each approved the settlement, according to the release. 

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Kyle Ewinger

In 2004, more than a decade before accusations arose against him in the Sibley-Ocheyedan school district, Ewinger was accused of inappropriate actions toward a Mediapolis student while the student slept, according to the lawsuit. He has also been reprimanded for having students sit in his lap. 

The Mediapolis district school agreed not to report the misconduct to the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners if Ewinger agreed to voluntarily resign, according to the attorneys for the plaintiff. 

He left with a “neutral letter of recommendation to future employers” in hand and proceeded to land teaching jobs at three more Iowa schools, the lawsuit reads. 

While teaching at Riverside Elementary School in Sioux City in 2010, Ewinger was accused of putting a pill in a 9-year-old boy's ice cream that caused the child to hallucinate. The boy told his therapist that Ewinger would sleep next to him while this happened.

In May of 2010, after the boy's report led to an investigation by the state Department of Human Services and local law enforcement, Ewinger was told in a letter that he was being transferred from Riverside Elementary School to Crescent Park Elementary School for the 2010-11 school year, according to court records. 

Ewinger pleaded guilty to sex abuse in February in Osceola County and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, time which was added on to the 55- to 85-year sentence he received in 2018 after a Nebraska jury convicted him of sexually assaulting the young child of a woman he was dating in 2012 and 2013. 

“This young student suffered horrific acts that no person, especially a child, should ever have to endure," John Sandy, an attorney for the plaintiff in the civil case, wrote in a statement Tuesday, adding that if the first schools had appropriately reported Ewing, the "life-altering assault" on the Sibley-Ocheyedan student would have been prevented.  

Sandy wrote that he hopes the settlement passes on a message of accountability among school districts, calling the lawsuit a victory for parents and students across Iowa.

"We hope this settlement will bring awareness for the need for not only schools, but all institutions who work with children, to be transparent and aggressive in vetting who will be interacting with those most vulnerable in our society," Sandy added.

Anna Spoerre covers crime and courts for the Des Moines Register. She can be contacted at aspoerre@dmreg.com, 515-284-8387 or on Twitter at @annaspoerre.

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