MINNEAPOLIS - A Hennepin County Judge has ordered a former Children's Theatre teacher and Twin Cities businessman to pay $2.5 million in a sex abuse lawsuit.
Court documents lay out the judgment levied against Jason McLean, who repeatedly failed to show up for depositions, hearings and other proceedings involving the lawsuit. The legal action was filed by a woman claiming that McLean repeatedly molested her in 1983 when she was 15 and 16 years old, and he was a 29-year-old teacher at the Children's Theatre Company.
The unidentified 'Jane Doe' is one of five people who have filed lawsuits against him.
McLean later became a businessman, purchasing the Varsity Theater and Loring Pasta Bar. He sold both of them in the summer of 2017 and left Minnesota, starting a restaurant in Oakland, California. Attorney Jeff Anderson, whose law firm is handling the case, says it appears McLean has now fled to Mexico.
“We have been hunting down McLean; we found him in California and then chased him to Mexico, and now it is time for serious reckoning” said Anderson in a written statement. “We are concerned that McLean still continues to pose a serious risk of harm, and we will continue to do whatever it takes to make him accountable to the women he harmed as children, even if it means chasing him to the ends of the earth.”
At the time the first lawsuits were filed in 2015 the defendant's attorney said McLean denied the allegations and would fight the lawsuits "with all his might and clear his name."
