Improve Grades/Win A Date With Teacher
The attractive new substitute teacher at Strongsville High School proposed a novel incentive to her class of special-education students: Improve your grades and win a dinner date with the teacher.
No one says the contest was fixed, but the winner was the 17-year-old captain of the football team, Steven Bradigan.
Dinner at the Dairy Queen was nothing special, but what happened afterwards was enough to melt his ice cream. In the car in the parking lot at Westfield SouthPark mall, Bradigan said the 36-year-old teacher, Christine Scarlett, wrapped her arms around him and tried to kiss him.
"I said, 'Whoa!' and pushed her away, and she started to cry," Bradigan, 20, recalled recently.
They both eventually composed themselves, he said, then spent the next half hour making out - a version of events Scarlett denies.
That was in November 2002, and began a sexual relationship that continued off-and-on for more than two years, with stolen moments at school, rendezvous in Scarlett's home and the birth of a son.
Now, Bradigan is pressing a custody case in Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court, and has sent warning letters to the Strongsville schools and Police Department threatening a lawsuit.
He accuses them of negligence for failing to pursue a criminal investigation of Scarlett.
"They asked her if she had sex with my son, and she said, 'No,' " said Lawrence Bradigan, Steven's father.
"That was the extent of the school's investigation."
