Jury awards $750,000 verdict against Chicago Public Schools on behalf of boy beaten with belts

By Dave Savini

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    CHICAGO (WBBM) — A federal jury on Wednesday awarded a $750,000 verdict against the Chicago Public Schools for its liability in the belt beating of a fourth grader at school, CBS News Chicago is told.

Plaintiff attorneys reported the verdict Wednesday. The sum was less than attorneys were seeking.

The trial for the civil suit was heard before a judge in U.S. District Court over the past 10 days. Attorneys for Jomaury Champ, who was 9 years old at the time of the beating, argued he suffered emotional trauma in addition to welts on his back.

CPS was accused of allowing an unauthorized person, an estranged aunt, whom Jomaury said he didn’t know, into the school to administer corporal punishment on him for misbehaving in class.

“The lady, she told me to pull down my pants, but I didn’t,” Jomaury told the CBS News Chicago Investigators back in 2018. “So she got mad, and she started whacking me with the two belts… [on] my legs and my back.”

Jomaury was 9 when the CBS News Chicago Investigators first interviewed him. He had just been beaten with belts outside his classroom in a school bathroom at George W. Tilton Elementary School, at 223 N. Keeler Ave. on Chicago’s West Side.

Jomaury’s family said his teacher, Kristen Haynes, was friends with the aunt. The family said Haynes gave the aunt the belts because Jomaury had been acting up in class.

The estranged aunt, Juanita Tyler, was convicted criminally for her role in the belt beating.

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