Man in sex case offers to settle

• By DAVID J. MITCHELL
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: Jan 18, 2009 - Page: 1B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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AMITE — A man who alleges that he had a years-long, consensual sexual relationship with a former Kentwood Junior High School teacher while he was a boy in high school has offered to settle and end the once-dormant case, court records show.

In a nearly four-year-old lawsuit, Ronnie T. Wesby, now 25, asserts former junior high teacher Tigia M. Finn had a sexual relationship with him that started when he was a 15-year-old freshman at Kentwood High School, according to his deposition.

Filed in February 2005 in the 21st Judicial District Court, the suit against the Tangipahoa Parish School Board and Finn seeks damages, records show.

The romance also included sexual liaisons in Finn’s classroom after school in spring 1999 until she got an apartment, where the affair continued regularly, Wesby alleges.

Finn, who is now 34 but was 24 when the liaison started in January 1999, also once took him to a University of Southern Mississippi football game in Hattiesburg, Wesby alleges.

The affair, which he said his parents did not know about, continued beyond Wesby’s senior year until mid-2004 after the relationship had soured considerably, records show.

In a June 2006 deposition filed last year that reveals new details, Wesby claims he told current School Board Vice President Ann Smith about the relationship during his senior year in 2002 because Finn was being controlling toward him, records show.

In a one-hour meeting at Smith’s house, Wesby alleges, Smith was first surprised but urged him to keep the affair quiet and deal with it after graduation.

“And that’s when she was like, well, Ronnie, you know, Kentwood High is known for all good things, and I would hate to let something like this bring the school down,” Wesby alleges he was told.

The next day, Wesby alleges, Smith told him she spoke to Finn, urged Wesby to work it out and that she “would like to see y’all get married one day.”

Smith, whom School Board attorney Chris Moody said categorically denies that conversation ever happened, was Kentwood High principal at the time. Smith, who did not return a call for comment Friday, was elected to the board in the fall of 2006.

In court documents, Finn, who was never Wesby’s teacher, does not dispute that the relationship occurred, saying under oath it lasted about four years.

But she claims the sexual relationship started in November 1999, after Wesby turned 16 and that sexual liaisons never happened on campus. Kentwood’s high school and junior high are on the same site.