A Louisiana family already suing a New Orleans preschool over their daughter’s alleged sexual abuse now says the fallout reached into her hospital records, after a counselor with no role in the girl’s care allegedly pulled her medical chart and passed details to the school’s principal. The counselor was fired. The principal has since left her post. And the underlying abuse lawsuit is headed toward a trial date later this month.
A Chart Accessed, Then Shared With the School
According to The Guardian, Claire Beaumont Poché, a licensed professional counselor at Manning Family Children’s Hospital in New Orleans, accessed the medical records of a preschool girl whose parents had reported that she was sexually abused at school. Poché was not part of the child’s treatment team, the outlet reports, but used an emergency so-called break the glass protocol to get into the chart anyway. Text messages later surfaced showing that Poché and Emily France Poché, who served as the preschool’s principal, discussed information from the girl’s file, according to the same report.
Poché was fired, the Guardian’s reporting states, after the hospital discovered she had shared information from the child’s medical file with the school’s principal. She has said she was told she was terminated for code of conduct violations and maintained that she did not believe she accessed the chart inappropriately, per the report. The hospital system, identified in the reporting as LCMC, investigated what it characterized as an impermissible disclosure of the child’s medical information and found that both her emergency-department visit and general encounter information, as well as details of a specific medical appointment and provider identity, had been disclosed to a third party. LCMC restricted the employee’s access to its health system as a result, the outlet reports. Manning Family Children’s Hospital did not respond to requests for comment, according to the same account.
The Underlying Abuse Allegation
The chart dispute grew out of a lawsuit filed by Jana and Roger Williams, who allege their daughter was fondled in a sexually abusive manner by another three-year-old student at Kehoe-France’s preschool in March 2024. The family reported the alleged abuse to local law enforcement, the Department of Children and Family Services, and state education authorities, the Guardian reports; Kehoe-France has said it also reported the alleged abuse to authorities. Roger Williams separately alerted LCMC that his daughter’s medical records had been impermissibly accessed and disclosed, according to the same reporting.
The Williamses filed suit in August 2024, alleging Kehoe-France was negligent in its supervision of their daughter — an allegation the school denies. Kehoe-France has said it disagrees with the allegations made against it and will defend itself through the legal process, adding that the court is the appropriate forum for resolving the claims and that it would not litigate the case through the media. Per the Guardian’s report, Emily France Poché has said her head of school, identified as Tanya Price, thought the girl’s father was abusing his daughter, and separately described Roger Williams as a narcissist. The family’s attorney, Richard Trahant, described the events as vile and repugnant, according to the same account.
Principal’s Exit and an Upcoming Deposition
Emily France Poché was announced on September 4 as no longer serving in the role of preschool principal, and the report states she had already left Kehoe-France’s administrative team by then. Claire Poché gave a deposition as a fact witness in the case on August 31, the outlet reports, while Emily France Poché’s own deposition has been postponed to October 15. The Williams family’s lawsuit remained unresolved as of the Guardian’s reporting and was tentatively set for trial the week of October 26…