By JAMES A. KIMBLE, Union Leader Correspondent

PORTSMOUTH — A former Portsmouth School District employee will likely have to pay a civil judgment as part of a lawsuit brought months after he was convicted of sexually assaulting a female student.

Last month, a judge dismissed a major portion of the lawsuit, which accused the Portsmouth School District of failing to enforce policies that could have prevented the sexual assault of a 14-year-old female student.

But that decision didn’t end the case. An attorney representing the teenage girl and her mother has been ordered to craft a recommended civil judgment against Kenneth Kimber.

Kimber recently completed a 3- to-8-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting the girl in February 2013. He never responded to the lawsuit, and a default judgment was entered against him in October 2014.

On Thursday, attorney Lawrence Vogelman asked for more time to craft a recommended judgment against Kimber.

U.S. Judge Joseph LaPlante ruled in a 19-page decision that the lawsuit failed to show how Portsmouth school officials made a deliberate choice not to enforce policies against sexual relationships or contact with students.

LaPlante also credited the school district with having policies concerning “responsible and acceptable use of school computers and the school district computer network.”

Police discovered that Kimber communicated with the girl through Facebook, and had maintained a secret folder on the school district’s network titled “YEP” that contained “photos of individuals, including Kimber himself, in various stages of undress.”

LaPlante concluded that the lawsuit essentially tried to “impose liability on the school district for the off-campus actions of one of its employees.”

Donna Feeney, a lawyer for the school district, maintained that Kimber and the girl communicated via Facebook and cellphone. Kimber was promptly dismissed from his job and barred from school property in the wake of his arrest, according to Feeney.

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