A Portland Public Schools principal characterized as a rumor the complaints of several eighth-grade girls about their now disgraced gym teacher, a newly released email shows.

For months, school district officials would not say who had used the word "rumor" to describe the girls' complaints.

The email shows then-Faubion School Principal LaShawn Lee used that term and indicates she ended the investigation that looked at why the eighth-graders refused to participate in Mitch Whitehurst's gym class. She did so, however, only after the district's top lawyer, Jollee Patterson, had made clear to her that she didn't have enough evidence to put Whitehurst on paid leave, let alone discipline him, Lee said in a statement. And Lee didn't let Whitehurst off the hook: She and vice principal Jen McCalley put in place several safeguards to protect students, including having another adult monitor gym class.

The Oregonian/OregonLive published an investigation in August that revealed how the district had for years protected Whitehurst, not children, despite complaints that he had solicited oral sex from students in the 1980s and tried to date another student in 2001. Whitehurst eventually lost his license for sexual misconduct with students.

The email indicating that Lee made the call to end the gym class investigation contradicts a previous account she gave The Oregonian/OregonLive. She blamed higher-ups for writing off as rumor the statements from girls that Whitehurst leered at them, added them on social media and made uncomfortable remarks about their bodies.

Former Faubion Principal LaShawn Lee

"I wanted something else to be done and to be told that it was rumors — I felt pretty powerless as a principal," Lee, who left the district in 2016, said in September.

In the Jan. 20, 2013 email, Lee wrote: "Based on the information we were able to gather, this was probably a middle school rumor."

Lee told The Oregonian/OregonLive in a statement after the district released the email that district legal and human resources officials repeatedly told her the evidence against Whitehurst was too weak to justify discipline. That made no sense to her but she felt she had to respect their direction, she said.

McCalley, now principal at Faubion, also says Portland school administrators lack power and that she and Lee wanted more done to rein in Whitehurst.

Patterson told The Oregonian/OregonLive in an email she disagreed with the two administrators' version of events. But Patterson would not answer questions, even to explain in general what Portland Public Schools' protocols would have been at that time. Patterson left the district in summer 2016.

Portland Public Schools released the latest email after The Oregonian/OregonLive threatened to take the school district to court over its contention the district illegally withheld public records. The district had in fact improperly withheld that and other documents.

District lawyer Stephanie Harper, who unsuccessfully tried to prevent the release of an even larger trove of records that were the basis of The Oregonian/OregonLive's investigation about Whitehurst, did not answer questions about why the district withheld the "middle school rumor" email.

Faubion Principal Jen McCalley

McCalley, speaking publicly about the matter for the first time, said she and Lee were left to brainstorm what to do about Whitehurst by themselves. She said they were upset by what they heard from the human resources and legal departments. The two school administrators came away with the strong impression that unless there was evidence Whitehurst had touched a student in a sexual way, the district would not discipline him.

In interviews with McCalley and the school's counselor, more than a dozen girls described seeing Whitehurst's eyes linger on girls' backsides or chests, notes from those interviews say. And several said they heard him compliment a girl for her perfect figure, motioning his hands to show curves, the records show.

So McCalley said she and Lee took several actions to make sure students were safe: a female student teacher was put in his gym class, girls were allowed to choose to take something other than gym, a counselor with an office adjacent to the gym left her door open to keep an eye on Whitehurst, and dancers he was suspected of watching from his office moved their practice out of his sight.

"Kids were doing the right thing," said McCalley, who was only a few months into her first job as an administrator at the time. "We teach kids to follow their gut. When you're feeling creepy with an adult, you need to tell someone, it needs to be taken seriously and action needs to occur. We were frustrated."

Lee's email says that, because Whitehurst was impatient to have the matter settled, Lee and McCalley met with him on a Friday to discuss the allegations. McCalley said she did not remember the meeting and said her understanding is that all the power to act resided with the legal and human resources department.

Lee, who has spoken to The Oregonian/OregonLive previously, would not agree to be interviewed but did answer questions through an attorney who sent emailed statements from the former principal.

Lee wrote the email in response to a question from human resources administrator Frank Scotto about when he, Whitehurst, Lee and a union representative were going to meet to discuss the boycott by the female students and the ensuing investigation.

Scotto emailed Lee asking if a time had been confirmed for that meeting. Lee wrote back:

"Jen and I met with Mitch on Friday about this situation. He approached me about wanting to meet as soon as possible. Based on the information that we were able to gather, this was probably a middle school rumor. In the meantime, we are going to keep a sharp eye on him. Jen will type up the notes and send them to you and Mitch when we return from the extended weekend."

Scotto wrote back, "That's good news about Mitch."

A formal meeting did not take place. The notes McCalley was to type up were not created, McCalley and others say. There are no written findings of the investigation, only transcripts of the interviews with the girls.

Scotto told The Oregonian/OregonLive this week he had trusted Lee's judgment that the evidence didn't warrant a meeting and that keeping a sharp eye on Whitehurst was the appropriate next step. "The emails say what they say," Scotto said. "I worked with her on other cases and I relied on her judgment and we had a good working relationship."

By that time though, Lee and McCalley said, Patterson had already tamped down concerns about Whitehurst. Patterson left the district in summer 2016 to take a job at law firm Miller, Nash, Graham & Dunn, which has counted on Portland Public Schools as a client for decades.

During the investigation, Lee sent an email to Patterson and other high-ranking district officials that she was "extremely conflicted" about the decision to have Whitehurst remain on campus and noted there had been rumblings about him for decades.

"I'm extremely concerned about this becoming a 'Penn State University' scandal," she wrote, invoking an infamous sex abuse cover up involving a longtime college football coach. She noted such a scandal could happen "with a single text or Facebook message."

At the time she sent that email, interviews with five girls had been shared with district lawyers, McCalley and Lee said. Four of those girls gave first-hand accounts of Whitehurst's behavior and how it worried them, records show. And Patterson and other officials had still more backdrop: They knew someone had splashed posters outside Jefferson High, where Whitehurst was athletic director, in 2011 alleging that he was a pedophile. And the previous month, a substitute who'd tried to warn district officials about Whitehurst years earlier ran into him at Faubion. The substitute teacher reported to Lee that he'd demanded oral sex from her and a classmate when they were Portland Public Schools students in the 1980s. Records show Lee passed that on to higher-ups, too.

The district provided a copy of Patterson's response to Lee's email expressing concern. But it redacted every word of the content.

Lee said that Patterson wrote that, in her expert view, the district did not have nearly enough evidence to justify putting Whitehurst on paid leave. The district's contract with the teachers union constrains its ability to remove teachers without evidence and due process.

Whitehurst continued to teach throughout the period in which he was investigated.

"To this day, I still do not understand why the district did not authorize placing Mr. Whitehurst on paid administrative leave during the investigation or imposing some type of disciplinary consequence," Lee wrote in her statement to The Oregonian/OregonLive. "The district has made it known that there must be substantiated reports of inappropriate sexual misconduct actions such as unwanted sexual touches, sexually suggestive remarks, or contact. Until this happens, I was told that could not reprimand Mr. Whitehurst. Human Resources and (Portland Public Schools) legal counsel controlled the investigation, providing close guidance at each step. The district has made it clear that it would require district approval and HR authorization to place staff members on leave and to impose disciplinary actions."

Scotto disagreed with Lee and McCalley's assertion about administrators' powers.

"When she says the principals are powerless, that's simply not accurate. They have a say. They are the person on the frontlines," he said. "It's hard to give an answer that's ironclad all the time, but generally speaking they've got a huge oar in the water."

It was at Faubion where Whitehurst was finally undone, though not in response to a student complaint. A male colleague complained that Whitehurst poked him in the anus at school. Lee supported the employee and made clear to the detective who investigated that Whitehurst had a troubling past.

A few weeks before the poke, Lee publicly confronted Whitehurst for slapping a different employee on the rear at a staff breakfast. According to a memo she wrote to human resources that day, she publicly confronted Whitehurst and warned him to "never touch any of my staff members on their butts again!"

Records show McCalley also made her alarm about Whitehurst clear to the detective. She told him she suspected Portland Public Schools had purposefully moved Whitehurst around, suggested people had built up a "tolerance" to Whitehurst, and told him that it's possible the strong teachers union helped him keep his job in the face of complaints and unprofessional behavior. McCalley also told him she had recently requested the district rerun a background check on Whitehurst.

Portland Association of Teachers President Suzanne Cohen has said the union will not speak to The Oregonian/OregonLive about Whitehurst.

The union did, however, publish a statement Sept. 6 on its website addressing personnel investigations.

"No one should have their professional reputation ruined by unsubstantiated rumors or be tried in the press where they are assumed guilty until proven innocent. We continue to demand that the district do its job of investigating complaints and taking appropriate actions, while adhering to core legal principles like due process and innocent until proven guilty," the statement says. "Contrary to the media's insinuations, following the procedures spelled out in our contract doesn't lead to troubling personnel problems like these, it helps avoid them."

Right now, a team of hand-picked investigators are conducting an independent investigation the school board launched in response to The Oregonian/OregonLive's reporting.

"I'm interested in the outcome of the investigation and hoping it provides some advice on systems, structures and polices that need to be updated," McCalley said. "I hope from all of this ... we learn how to protect our kids in a different way. And this isn't only a (Portland Public Schools) story; it's what's going on in the nation. We need to come to a better set of guidelines."

That it took that police investigation to get action was deeply frustrating, she said.

"What we subject our kids or our employees to to get to a certain threshold is sad," McCalley said. "People's lives are impacted. There was no joy in 'Thank god we finally got him.' It was more just absolute heartbreak that it had to get to this."

— Bethany Barnes

Got a tip about Portland Public Schools? Email Bethany: bbarnes@oregonian.com