The Barker case: a lawsuit about something else, a question nobody expected, and the answer that started everything.

A professor sues her school

In 2021, Dr. Justin Barker, a faculty member at the Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts, sued the school in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, Barker v. LSMSA, No. 1:21-CV-04419. She alleged that she had been sexually harassed by a supervisor and then terminated for complaining about it. It was an employment case. It was not about students, and it was not about Thorn Lacaze. The attorneys who represented her, Donald Hodge and Brandy Mai, are the attorneys who operate this tip line. Both are graduates of the school.

The question that changed the case

In December 2022, Dr. Barker's lawyers deposed the school's leadership: the Title IX Coordinator, the Human Resources Officer, the Director of Academic Affairs, and, on the final day, the Executive Director. Her lawyers had heard, during the case, that a senior administrator had left the school in 2020 under a cloud involving students. So near the end of the Executive Director's deposition, they asked about him.

Q: Can you tell me who Mr. Lacaze is?
A: He was the director, senior director for external affairs at the school until summer of 2020.
Q: Okay. And what happened?
A: He had several Title IX complaints filed against him for alleged behavior, inappropriate behavior between he and students at the school while they were students at the school. One was a complaint filed from an alum of the school about inappropriate behavior at a reunion activity after she had graduated.
Q: Were there underage students involved at the time of the incident relating to Thorn?
A: While they were at school, yes, all of them. All but one.
Q: Okay.
A: Six.Deposition of Executive Director Steve Horton, December 15, 2022, pages 121 to 122

Q: Do you know where Thorn Lacaze is now, where he works?
A: Natchitoches Parish School District.
Q: And I believe earlier you testified that your wife works at Natchitoches Parish School Board. Did you have any duties as a mandated reporter to report those Title IX allegations to the next school or school board?
A: No. I had obligations to submit to the sheriff and the district attorney and I did it within the guidelines of timeline set forth.
Q: Sheriff and district attorney?
A: Yes.
Q: To your knowledge, were any criminal charges ever filed?
A: No, ma'am.
Q: Are you aware of whether Natchitoches Parish Schools are aware based on these investigations?
A: They are aware.Deposition of Executive Director Steve Horton, December 15, 2022, pages 121 to 122. Earlier in the deposition, Dr. Horton testified that his wife had worked for the Natchitoches Parish School Board for thirty two years.

Q: What were the complaints made against Thorn?
A: There were Title IX accusations against him.
Q: Were the Title IX accusations by a faculty or by a student?
A: By former students.
Q: And what was the conclusion of that investigative process?
A: He quit, so the process stopped.
Q: Do you know where Thorn LaCaze is working today?
A: I believe at the Natchitoches Parish School Board.
Q: Has Louisiana School notified the Natchitoches Parish School Board of the circumstances of Mr. LaCaze's departure?
A: I can't, I don't know.
Q: You didn't?
A: I didn't. No.
Q: Do you believe that the Natchitoches Parish School system should be made aware of the issues?
A: Well, there's two levels to that. On a legal level, I don't know if we're able to. I'm not sure of that process. On a moral level, yes.Deposition of Title IX Coordinator Dr. John Allen, December 14, 2022, pages 64 to 65. Dr. Allen also testified that Lacaze "was directly employed by" the LSMSA Foundation, the school's fundraising arm, which "has always been housed in the school."

Read the two passages together. The Executive Director swore that the man six students had reported went from the school to the Natchitoches Parish School District, where the Executive Director's own wife had worked for thirty two years, and that the parish schools "are aware." His Title IX Coordinator swore that he never notified them, did not know of anyone who had, and that failing to do so was, on a moral level, wrong. The Executive Director also swore that he had reported Lacaze to the Sheriff and the District Attorney and that the Sheriff had passed the matter to the State Police. On September 10, 2026, the Sheriff's Office certified in writing that it has no record of any report concerning Lacaze. Identical requests are pending with the State Police, the District Attorney, and the city and university police.

What the school did while it was being questioned

During those same December 2022 depositions, the Executive Director exchanged text messages with the other witnesses, in a group thread with the Director of Academic Affairs and the Director of Institutional Research, about their testimony. He deleted those messages the same day. The school's Human Resources Officer, who had investigated Dr. Barker's complaint, had shredded her investigation notes. When asked in discovery where the notes were, the school first said none existed, then said they had been given to a retired administrator.

Dr. Barker's lawyers moved for sanctions. On March 8, 2024, United States Magistrate Judge Joseph Perez-Montes issued a Report and Recommendation that the District Court adopted as its judgment. Read the ruling here. Among its findings:

• The Executive Director deleted his text messages with the other deponents with the intent to conceal them, on the day the depositions were taken.
• The court granted an adverse inference that "(1) Dr. Horton instructed the LSMSA employees how they were to testify in their depositions; (2) the LSMSA employees, Dr. Key, Dr. Allen, and Sheila Kidd, testified in their depositions in accordance with those instructions; and (3) the testimony in their depositions reflects the instructions given them by Dr. Horton." The court described the heart of the matter as messages about "getting their stories straight."
• The Human Resources Officer shredded her investigation notes, which a federal regulation required the school to preserve while Dr. Barker's discrimination charge was pending; the destruction was intentional; the school's contradictory sworn answers about the notes appeared to be an attempt to conceal it; and it was possible the notes were never provided to the EEOC.
• Dr. Barker had asked the court to find violations of the federal and state criminal obstruction statutes. The court declined, not on the merits, but because a private civil litigant cannot enforce criminal laws; that decision, the court wrote, belongs to prosecutors.

The case settled in 2024. Dr. Barker refused any nondisclosure agreement and directed that the record be released, which is why this page can quote it. No one at the school was disciplined for anything the court found. The Executive Director remained in office for two more years.

The notice in the newspaper

The Barker case had produced something its lawyers had not gone looking for: a sworn admission that six students had reported a senior administrator, that five of them were minors, and that the school had let him resign without a finding. On November 22, 2024, counsel sent the school's Board of Directors a written demand to preserve every record concerning Lacaze, with the court's ruling attached. Three days later, counsel published that demand, together with a notice inviting survivors to come forward, in the Natchitoches Parish Journal, where it remains posted. Read the published notice here.

Ten days after the demand, the Executive Director sent every employee of the school a written directive stating that they had "NO obligation whatsoever" to communicate with counsel for survivors. It has never been rescinded.

Survivors came forward

Within days of the notice, people began to contact counsel: former students, current students, parents, and others who had seen or been told things and had watched nothing happen. Over the following twenty months, counsel gathered their accounts, obtained the school's own records through litigation, and placed the matter, in writing, before every oversight authority Louisiana and the federal government possess: the Board, the Legislative Auditor, the State Inspector General, the Board of Ethics, the Department of Education, the Board of Regents, legislators, and the federal Office for Civil Rights. The Inspector General answered that it has no authority to investigate the school. The rest, for the most part, did not answer.

The evidence went to law enforcement, and then came the arrest

On July 21, 2026, counsel referred the evidence gathered from survivors to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Louisiana State Police, supported by a sworn affidavit and an exhibit binder. In August 2026, the Louisiana State Police Special Victims Unit opened an investigation on a complaint concerning "the exchange of goods for child sexual abuse material and sexual favors by juveniles." On September 9, 2026, the State Police arrested Anthony T. "Thorn" Lacaze on eight counts, including production of child sexual abuse material and felony carnal knowledge of a juvenile. The State Police release is here. The investigation, the State Police say, remains active and ongoing. Mr. Lacaze is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.