Update: Family speaks out against JoCo cougar

When police couldn’t stop her son’s harassment and cyberstalking from a Johnson County cougar, the boy and his mother, Joan, turned to the courts, Joan said in a press conference yesterday afternoon.

“In response to my son’s pleadings for help, the police department was contacted many times, there were reports filed,” said Joan, who wouldn’t give her last name. “No one was able to stop this woman from the damage that she has done to my son and to our entire family.”

Jessica Wright of Leawood has never admitted to these allegations and hasn’t been convicted of a crime. But on Tuesday, a judge awarded $7.3 million to Lewis Heacker, now 23. It’s the second major ruling on cyberstalking and bullying to cycle through the justice system in the last couple of years.

Evidence presented in court alleges that Wright, who is 48, bought booze and reefer for a then-14-year-old Heacker and then let him and his friends party in her basement.

She also allegedly tormented Heacker and his girlfriend with 500 phone calls — up to 20 per day, usually between midnight and 4 a.m.— and text messages.

The consequences, according to Heacker’s attorney Luis Mata, were “extensive treatment for anxiety and other symptoms that were a result of the harassment and stalking.”

Referencing a school photo of her son, Joan said: “The picture you see before you today is the young man that I allowed to babysit at what I thought was a friend’s home a decade ago, and that’s the young man I want back again. This is the beginning, I hope, of healing for him.”