NORTH KINGSTOWN — The American Legion Post 12 is expected to find new life as the home to the Living Hope Christian Church after the building sold at auction this week.

Pastor Peter Atkin agreed to pay $361,000 for the post hall at a receivership auction Monday in Washington County Superior Court, said Theodore Orson, the court-appointed receiver. The church has been meeting Sunday mornings in the auditorium at North Kingstown High School.

The owners were forced to sell the building and the surrounding two or so acres to help pay thousands of dollars awarded to three women who filed a sexual harassment complaint against the post with the state Commission for Human Rights.

The commission found in 2004 that an Italian mother and daughter were sexually and racially harassed while working as bartenders at the post. Carol A. Pacheco and her daughter Carol A. Cote were fired in late 1999 after complaining that patrons touched them inappropriately and taunted them with ethnic slurs, referring to the pair as “Mini Guinea” and “Mama Guinea.”

A third woman, Deborah L. Potter, was fired after she assisted with the investigation, the commission concluded.

The commission ordered the post to pay damages and back wages. The post appealed the order, declaring it outlandish. Last November, Superior Court Judge Jeffrey A. Lanphear upheld the commission’s ruling, calling the acts against the women repugnant and reprehensible.

Cote was awarded $25,000 in compensatory damages. Pacheco was awarded $15,000 and Potter $5,000. The women will also receive retroactive pay and interest. In all, the Legion could pay as much as $800,000, Arthur M. Read II, the lawyer for the women, said earlier.

A group interested in turning the post into a Montessori school agreed to pay $425,000 for the 730 South County Trail property in July, but that deal fell through due to contingencies related to the structure, Orson said. Another buyer offered $255,000. The auction was held Monday to ensure the post was getting the maximum value, he said.

Atkin’s offer came in at $361,000, the highest qualified bidder. The church selected the site, straddling North Kingstown’s border with Exeter, as a good location to build its faith community, Orson said. Atkin did not return two phone calls yesterday.

The agreement is tinged with disappointment, he said.

“The [post] is disappointed they couldn’t come up with the money to buy it and retain it,” he said.

The post, which went into receivership shortly after Lanphear’s ruling, closed last Tuesday with a gathering of some of its 200 members, said Tom Madison, of the post’s board of governors. The American Legion held events and meetings at the hall, hosted civics groups and rented the space for weddings for four decades.

“Right now, we’re starting over. We’re looking for property,” he said. “We’re not too happy about it.”

In the meantime, they are meeting at the Downey-Weaver American Legion hall in Kenyon.

Madison challenged the women’s claims, and said that some of the offenses were committed by a nonmember. The post’s lawyer Russell Raskin said yesterday that he could not comment without the board’s OK. The women’s lawyer, Read, did not return a phone call.

The closing is set for Nov. 27.