THE INVESTIGATORS: Former student files salacious lawsuit against Episcopal School, former teacher

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - A lawsuit filed by a former Episcopal School student lays out salacious allegations against a former teacher at the elite private school in Baton Rouge.

The school says the teacher, identified in the lawsuit as Vincent Hoang, was terminated earlier this year.

In the lawsuit, the female former student, identified only as “Z Doe”, claims Hoang attempted to “groom” her into having a sexual relationship with him beginning in the 2020-2021 school year and continuing into 2022.

The former student claims Hoang repeatedly told her he wanted to have a “mixed” baby with her and sent her sexually-explicit text messages.

The lawsuit also claims that years earlier, Hoang had a “sexual relationship” with a different girl, who was then a senior at Episcopal. The lawsuit claims that the alleged relationship later “resulted in the birth of a child.”

Z Doe claims the alleged actions by Hoang led her to eventually leave the school prior to graduating.

She is asking for damages including “extreme emotional distress and mental anguish, assault and battery, loss of educational opportunities, and embarrassment.”

The lawsuit claims Episcopal administrators were aware of repeated inappropriate interactions Hoang allegedly had with Z Doe and certain other female students and did not take proper actions to stop it.

In a letter to parents last week, Episcopal’s Head of School Dr. Carrie Steakley disputed the lawsuit’s allegations against the school. “One such allegation is that Episcopal had previous knowledge about the former employee’s behavior yet took no action,” the letter says. “To be clear, administrators acted as soon as we had knowledge, terminating the employee immediately in March of 2022,” Steakley’s letter said.

The lawsuit alleges that administrators at Episcopal were aware that Hoang “regularly had female minor students eat lunch in his classroom” but did nothing to “inquire, much less, stop the behavior.”

During one of those times when the females were allegedly in his classroom, the lawsuit claims one of the female students asked how men get erections.

The lawsuit claims Hoang volunteered to show the girl, using Z Doe as an example, “because she’s 18″ and “I can’t go to jail.” “Defendant Hoang then proceeded to forcibly grab Petitioner (Z Doe) by her waist and began rubbing his private part against her body producing an erection,” the lawsuit claims.

The lawsuit claims Hoang told the student he could help her get into prestigious colleges and obtain scholarships and that he was “very popular” with Episcopal administrators. The student claims, after allegedly refusing a sexual advance by the teacher, Hoang later texted her saying he was lowering one of her grades as punishment. He allegedly texted her saying “that he knew she deserved an ‘A’ but that he was not going to give it to her,” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit claims Z Doe eventually showed a fellow student “sexually explicit texts” she had received from Hoang and that student encouraged her to show someone. Z Doe says she then emailed one of her Episcopal tutors with copies of the text messages. Within days of that happening, the lawsuit says, Hoang was no longer employed at the school.

Hoang did not immediately return an email from WAFB seeking comment for this report.

A teacher with the name Vincent Hoang is listed among the faculty for Woodlawn High School. WAFB reached out to the communications department for the East Baton Rouge Parish School System. A spokeswoman was unable to confirm that the Vincent Hoang employed with Woodlawn is the same Hoang fired from Episcopal, saying the personnel needed to confirm that information is away for fall break.

Scottie Hunter will have more on the lawsuit tonight on WAFB 9NEWS at 6PM.

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