Kamehameha settles for $5M over spy camera in shower

Kamehameha Schools has agreed to pay $5 million to settle a civil lawsuit filed by the families of four former students of a teacher who is accused of secretly recording students showering in his faculty apartment.

The now-former speech teacher and debate team coach, Gabriel Alisna, is awaiting criminal trial in state court on felony violation of privacy charges involving three of the students and misdemeanor sexual assault charges involving one of the three.

The $5 million settlement comes on the heels of an $80 million settlement, announced in February, between the educational trust for Hawaiian children and 32 plaintiffs who claimed a psychiatrist sexually abused them or their family members while students at the Kapalama campus decades ago.

Michael Green, the lawyer who represents the families of the four students, says Kamehameha Schools lawyers did not ask him to keep the settlement confidential.

“I truly believe the trustees want this to be a message that they will do whatever they believe is proper for the kids,” Green said, “And I think they’re taking steps to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

The lawsuit claims that KS officials should have known about Alisna’s action and taken steps to prevent it but didn’t, and faults the officials for their handling of the matter after they discovered it. The settlement, which was acknowledged by both parties Thursday and is being finalized this week, dismisses those claims.

KS Chief Executive Officer Jack Wong said, “Together we agreed resolution was the right thing to do, and we remain committed to seeing Alisna held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”

The agreement also comes after the trust abandoned its latest attempt to keep out of public view documents in the criminal case.

According to documents filed recently in the criminal case, one of Alisna’s former students, who had graduated and was staying with Alisna, discovered the shower videos on a hard drive in Alisna’s closet and reported his discovery to a Kamehameha Schools faculty or staff member in the summer of 2012. The student who made the discovery is not one of the plaintiffs in the civil lawsuit or the alleged victim in the criminal case.

The employee reported what the former student said on the trust’s anonymous online reporting system on March 2, 2013. The tipster was reluctant to report what the former student said without seeing the videos or knowing when they were recorded.

Four days later KS Compliance Officer David Burge conducted a follow-up, online interview with the tipster and a face-to-face interview with a school employee who is a former Alisna student and, after graduating, became a debate team coach and Alisna’s girlfriend for 4-1/2 years.

The former girlfriend said in the interview that Alisna did allow students to sleep overnight at his apartment in preparation for debate tournaments, shows interest in male students and keeps online videos.

The following day, on March 7, two KS security officers searched Alisna’s apartment and seized the hard drive, a clothes hook camera and other evidence, according to the documents. KS Captain of Security Michael Moses and KS Security Sgt. Clarke Mills testified in state court in May that they searched the apartment after Alisna was called to the high school principal’s office for an interview with Burge.

Later that same day Moses, who is a retired Honolulu Police Department major, sent an email to an HPD commander telling the commander that he might contact him the following day “to initiate a very sensitive police investigation involving a faculty member and possibly KS student.” Moses said in the email that he was “awaiting further instruction from the high school principal and our legal department before we move forward.”

KS officials did file a police report the following day, March 8, six days after receiving the anonymous tip.

Alisna had sought to have the evidence seized by Moses and Mills thrown out because he claims they needed a search warrant. He claimed that the security officers either burglarized his apartment or were acting as agents of police because state law requires employees or officers of public and private schools to immediately report to police or the state Department of Human Services if they have reason to believe that child abuse has occurred or might occur in the reasonably foreseeable future. He had called Moses and Mills to testify in support of his claim.

Circuit Judge Rom Trader last month rejected Alisna’s claim and said Alisna’s rental agreement allows KS as the landlord to enter his apartment for inspections and to terminate the agreement at any time if the apartment is used for unlawful or immoral purposes.

Deputy Prosecutor Lynn Costales submitted the record of the anonymous tip, transcripts of the interview with Alisna and his former girlfriend and case notes by Burge for the Moses and Mills testimony hearing. KS lawyers had asked Trader to file the documents under seal, but before Trader ruled on it, the lawyers withdrew the request.