BELLEVUE - The school district in this east Seattlesuburb has agreed to pay a former elementary school pupil $190,500to settle a lawsuit her family filed claiming that boys hadsexually harassed her starting when she was 7.

It's the state's largest settlement ever for a minor-on-minorsexual harassment case, according to the plaintiff's attorney,Yvonne Kinoshita Ward.

"It actually makes us feel very vindicated," BarbaraCrittenden, the girl's mother, told the King County Journal onThursday, a day after a judge approved the settlement. "Basically,we followed our conscience from the beginning. We just felt, howcan we stand by and let this happen?"

Crittenden sued the Bellevue School District and Newport HeightsElementary School Principal Marian Peiffer in December 2001,accusing Peiffer of doing nothing when her daughter complainedabout boys sexually harassing her.

She alleged that boys at Newport Heights began harassing thegirl in 1998, when she was a second-grader, after she had flunked aroutine hearing test and had to carry a card that read "failed"because she is hearing-impaired.

One boy drew a nude picture of her with her name written on itand showed it to friends, the plaintiffs said. Soon, a half-dozenother boys started taunting the girl by using sexual language,pinching and grabbing her, pinning her against a wall, andthreatening to force another boy to have sex with her at aschool-sponsored Valentine's Day dance.

A school counselor told the girl she needed to "handle her ownproblems." Ward said Peiffer refused to meet with the pupils untilCrittenden threatened to call her attorney.

The principal eventually called the boys' parents, but theirbehavior continued. Peiffer never punished them, and she neverreported the incident to school district officials as required bylaw, Ward said.

In a deposition, Peiffer testified that the lawsuit was aneye-opener, and said she's now aware that sexual harassment mayoccur among kids in elementary school.

Newport Heights Elementary now teaches its pupils about sexualharassment through its Steps to Respect Program, and it is trainingteachers to recognize peer-on-peer sexual harassment.

Before the lawsuit, the school had no sexual harassment policyor education program, school officials said in depositions taken inMay. State law requires that all schools develop sexual harassmentpolicies and post them for all to see.

Crittenden's attorney said it was gratifying that the schoolenacted a sexual harassment policy. "The whole point of bringingthis was to raise awareness," Ward said. "Knowing that at leastsome steps were taken feels good."

Crittenden pulled her daughter out of Newport Heights andenrolled her at a local private school, where she excelled andencountered no similar problems.

The family later moved to Spokane, where Chrittenden's daughter,now 14, is a freshman in high school. Her mom said she's gettinggood grades and is on her school's swimming and volleyball teams.

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