Diane “Betsy” Cornwell was effusive in a 1980 article in the Austin American-Statesman, talking about the joys of watching drama students perform. Then a teacher at Lyndon B. Johnson High School in Austin, she told the reporter that watching them felt like witnessing “the kindling of their enjoyment of performance and creation.”
In 1988, Cornwell moved to the newly created James Bowie High School, where she ran the theater department for more than 30 years. During her tenure, that spirit and enthusiasm for the theater was sapped from many of her students: According to federal and state lawsuits filed by multiple former students, Cornwell subjected them to emotional abuse, encouraged them to perform sexual acts on each other in front of her, and created a hostile educational environment as the leader of the school’s Starlight Theater Company. Conditions were so bad, the complaints allege, that several of the students contemplated suicide during high school, with at least two hospitalized for suicidal ideation.
Nine former students have sued the Austin Independent School District (AISD) in the federal lawsuit, under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. Three of the nine also filed in state court, suing Cornwell personally for alleged indecency with a child and sexual performance of a child, both violations of state law.
