Appeals Court: Minnesota student’s defamation lawsuit against school principal, pastor may proceed

The Minnesota Court of Appeals ruled Monday that a student’s defamation lawsuit against her former school and principal over cheating allegations can move forward, reversing a District Court dismissal of the case.

Last year, Rebecca Hamson and her mother, Kimberly Hamson, sued the Foothills Christian Academy Society of Backus, Minn., and its principal and pastor, Blair Ecker. The conflict arose after Hamson was accused of cheating in 2022 and Ecker made a series of statements about the girl to staff and students, but the lawsuit also includes allegations by another student of being sexually assaulted by Ecker inside the private religious school, which closed last month.

Ed Shaw, the lawyer representing the Hamson family, said they were happy the Court of Appeals reversed the District Court decision but there is now a concern that “there was more sinister behavior happening, too.”

Backus, population 262, is 40 miles north of Brainerd.

“There’s your small-town America, right there,” Shaw said. “Everybody knows everybody in that school community.”

He said that while his client is not bringing an abuse case, there was “a serious lack of oversight of teaching staff there.”

“The school has closed down now,” Shaw said. “One could draw their own conclusions on that.”

Foothills Christian Academy used a password encrypted system to track assignments and grades. Rebecca Hamson allegedly manipulated her grades 76 times after gaining access to the system. At a meeting of staff and other students accused of cheating, Ecker labeled the scheme as a “cheater game” and referred to Hamson as the ringleader of the plan.

“We can be mad at her,” Ecker told the group, according to a transcript. “I would be mad at myself if I were you guys for being a part of a scheme with somebody with a poor IQ. Okay? And that’s what I mean. Sitting around the table planning a bank heist, and you’ve got — you’ve got a special ed sitting across the table. Maybe it’s time to get up and go, pick a new crew."

He also told the students he needed to punish them like kids “peeing in the toaster” and that Hamson had been expelled.

Hamson and her family were not at the meeting.

Court documents show that Hamson’s mother was a teacher at Foothills Christian Academy and had pulled her daughter out to attend another school, but her daughter was never expelled. In a sworn affidavit, Kimberly Hamson also said that Ecker was the one who gave students access to passwords and the grading system. He referred to the girls as “student teachers.”

Rebecca Hamson’s sister also supplied an affidavit. She attended the same school and shared text messages with another student who had been labeled a “student teacher” by Ecker and given a password to the grading system. The text messages showed the girl supplying answers to various test questions.

“To my knowledge, all students participated in sharing answers at Foothills Christian Academy,” Hamson’s sister said in her affidavit.

The school’s former athletics director, Loren Fritze, provided a sworn affidavit that from the moment he became involved with the school, cheating was an issue. “It was not just normal cheating,” he said. “But students having passwords to see all of the online test answers.”

Ecker allegedly knew the issue of cheating was about to be brought to the school board and Kimberly Hamson said her daughter was being used as a scapegoat to “cover up the cheating that had been occurring for years” at the school and to ruin her family’s reputation in the Christian community and her daughter’s reputation with her peers.

The lawsuit alleged that even if Hamson changed her grades, Ecker’s statements labeling her as a special education student with a low IQ who was expelled were defamatory.

The Court of Appeals disagreed.

Judge JaPaul Harris wrote that the affidavit given by Kimberly Hamson raises issues of material fact that Ecker may have made those disparaging remarks about her daughter because he was trying to cover up the cheating scandal and it should be left to a jury to determine if the statements were made with actual malice.

Tucked away in the lawsuit is a sworn affidavit by a family member of Ecker, who attended the school and said cheating was rampant. She also alleged that Ecker had groomed her and sexually assaulted her when she was in eighth grade and that several other students had seen nude photos she exchanged with the principal.

“The cheating activities don’t even scratch the surface of the real horrors that occur in that school,” the girl wrote, noting that a police report was filed but not followed up on because her mother didn’t want to put her through the trauma of testifying.

The Pine and Lakes Echo Journal reported that the school closed in September.