Private school to pay family of expelled student

LADUE, Mo. -- The family of a former private school student -- expelled for distributing nude photographs of an underage female classmate -- has settled its lawsuit against the school.

Under an agreement reached last month and still to be finalized, Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School will pay Matthew Beath's family $200,000.

The settlement also calls for the school to destroy Beath's discipline records after the 2005-2006 school year -- which would have been his senior year -- and distribute a letter acknowledging shortcomings in the way the school handled the situation two years ago.

The letter, to be signed by the school's headmaster and Beath's parents, will go out before the end of the summer, school officials told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

St. Louis County Court transcripts indicate that Beath's family and the school agreed he would not apply to be readmitted.

Beath was one of four students expelled by the school. The list also included a girl, then in ninth grade, who took nude photos of herself and sent them to other students over the $17,000-a-year school's Internet server.

Beath, then a ninth-grader as well, was expelled after the girl told a school official he had sexually assaulted her at a party. His parents sued a year later, saying the school invaded their son's privacy and defamed his character.

Those allegations and others were either dropped by the parents or thrown out by a judge, leaving only a breach of contract allegation in the lawsuit. The trial was to have started Monday.

"We are very pleased with the settlement that was reached, and we believe that justice has been served and our son has been vindicated," the family said in a statement issued by their attorney, Gerard Carmody.

School spokesman Wade Rouse declined to comment because the settlement is not yet final.