On the second day of trial in an $8-million lawsuit against Sunriver Preparatory School, a student counselor said she did not want one of the school’s international students sent back to Korea after the girl said her father had sexually abused her in Bend.

”I did not want her in an abusive house,” student counselor Pamela Goldsmith told a Deschutes County Circuit Court jury Wednesday.

The student, now 20, is suing the school for negligence and is asking for $8 million for physical and mental abuse and for being expelled from the school after she was raped.

The student’s attorneys claim the school is responsible for exposing the girl to sexual abuse when her father visited her during spring break in 1998 and raped her three times.

However, Sunriver Prep’s attorney says the school should not be held responsible because it was poor judgment on the part of a Sunriver Prep teacher who was hosting the student that led to the abuse. That teacher and other families hosting students are not agents of the school, he claims.

Goldsmith said she was ”stunned and physically sick” when she learned the father had sexually abused the student three times during a spring-break visit to Bend in 1998.

According to the student’s attorneys, Kevin Strever and Bill Barton, the student was living with a host family Sunriver Preparatory School teacher Kim Wheeler when the abuse occurred.

The student had told Wheeler that her father had sexually abused her for years, just five days before his visit, Strever said.

But when the student failed to confirm to police the story she had told Wheeler about her father abusing her, Wheeler faxed the student’s father a message saying the girl was sick and was unable to take a trip with him to Iowa over spring break.

However, Strever said, the father showed up at Wheeler’s home on March 20, 1998, and Wheeler failed to notify the police. Instead she attempted to keep the father from isolating his daughter.

But the father was able to rape his daughter three times during the following four days.

Principal Trish King testified Wednesday that she did not learn of the abuse that occurred during the break until April 15 20 days later.

King said when she did find out, she was unable to determine whether the student was suicidal because of the abuse or a threat to others. For that reason, she dismissed the student from school.

King said the mother, who had limited abilities in English, had submitted a letter to Sunriver Prep saying she did not want any information about her daughter’s mental state released to the school. King said she believed Wheeler had a hand in writing the letter.

Under questioning by Barton, King acknowledged that she had tried to send the student back to Korea with her mother and also threatened to fire Wheeler and another teacher, Dr. Frost Lee, to keep them from sheltering the girl.

King testified that the situation surrounding the girl was the most ”frightening” she had ever dealt with in her 20-year career as an educator. She said she tried to separate the girl from Wheeler because Wheeler ”had given so much bad advice” to the student and her family.

”I was concerned that Kim Wheeler was somehow trying to keep (the student) from getting into therapy,” she said, noting she did not even have the authority to fire the teachers.

Barton introduced letters from King threatening to fire Wheeler and Lee if they allowed the student to remain in their homes. Barton said the letters show the school had the ultimate authority over students in host homes.

He also presented an agreement signed by King and the girl’s parents outlining some of the behaviors students should maintain while staying with a host family.

King said the agreement was simply a set of guidelines and was not a contractual agreement.

Under questioning by Sunriver Prep attorney John Hart, King said that payment from parents of students to host families ranged from $300 to $1,500 per month not the school’s suggested $650. King said the cost of the care and the supervision of students was at the discretion of the host families not the school.

Meanwhile, an arrest warrant has been issued for the girl’s father, but he remains at large. In December 1998, a Deschutes County grand jury indicted the then 46-year-old father of the student on counts of rape, incest, sodomy and sexual abuse.

The charges stemmed from the rapes occurring in March 1998 and previous alleged assaults.

The trial, expected to last six more days, is scheduled to continue today.