Unmarried Teacher, Fired After Having Baby, Wins $3.3 Million

A federal court jury decided Tuesday that an unwed teacher was unjustly fired for keeping a baby she said was conceived in a rape and awarded her $3.3 million in damages.

The three-man, three-woman jury awarded $2 million in compensatory damages to Jeanne Eckmann, 38, and $1.3 million in punitive damages, to be paid by six past or present members of the Hawthorn School Board, which fired her.

School board attorneys said they will appeal the decision.

Eckmann, who once studied in a convent to be a nun, contended that the school board violated her civil rights and defamed her by citing immorality among grounds for her 1982 dismissal.

She said that she was fired for keeping a baby conceived in a November, 1980, rape and that she was told a month before her son was born to put the baby up for adoption or resign, or she would be fired for immorality.

“If she’d have just taken her medical leave, had her baby and put the baby up for adoption, we wouldn’t be here today,” Edward Diedrich, Eckmann’s attorney, told the jury in closing arguments. “They were after her because of her motherhood. They were not after her for anything else.”

Trustees of the rural school district 20 miles east of Rockford testified that they doubted that Eckmann was raped. They said they also fired her for insubordination, cruelty to students and causing divisiveness among teachers.