California School Sexual Abuse Lawsuits

Compensation for Victims of Sexual Abuse in California Schools

Injury Lawyer Team has filed dozens of California school sexual abuse lawsuits to hold school administrators accountable for allowing predators access to innocent children. Inappropriate conduct should never be accepted, as child molestation has permanent psychological impacts on growing minds. 

If you or a loved one has been sexually abused, our compassionate attorneys can help you file claims against the school district and individual perpetrators. Contact us today for a free consultation about your legal rights. 

Allegations of Abuse 

Hundreds of children have been sexually assaulted or exploited at school, ranging from elementary school kids to teenagers. These are just some of the many allegations against schools throughout California. 

California School for the Deaf

The California School for the Deaf sexual abuse cases, settled for $14 million in July 2025, were one of the largest settlements for a single victim in California history. This California boarding school sexual abuse happened between 2009 and 2011, when the victim was only 10 years old. Dorm attendant Ricardo Rose sexually assaulted the boy multiple times, even threatening to bite his fingers off. 

The boy was able to escape by asking his parents to let him leave the facility. He only came forward with his allegations after turning 18. 

School officials received numerous complaints about Rose, with some female faculty stating that he made them uncomfortable. One even refused to work with him in any capacity. However, the school did not take action. 

San Bruno Park School District

Former first and second-grade teacher Jeremy Yeh allegedly engaged in inappropriate behavior with multiple students at both El Crystal Elementary School and Allen Elementary School between 2016 and 2023. At least 17 children were affected throughout the school district. 

Yeh was eventually arrested and convicted on 17 felony counts of child molestation. A lawsuit filed in March 2025 alleges that, instead of actively investigating allegations, district officials dismissed the children’s complaints and transferred Yeh from El Crystal to Allen Elementary School.

Twin Rivers Unified School District

A former Del Paso Heights Elementary School teacher pleaded guilty to committing sex crimes in February 2025. The lawsuit alleged that during the 2014-2015 school year, Kim Kenneth Wilson used his position as head of the school’s audio-visual club to lock a sixth grader in a windowless, soundproofed room and sexually assault the student. He also took photos of the sexual abuse. 

In August 2025, Twin Rivers Unified School District reached a $6 million settlement with the victim’s family. A separate lawsuit alleges that Wilson took a seven-year-old female student out of class, removed her clothing, and sexually assaulted her in multiple locations. 

Folsom Cordova Unified School District

The Folsom Cordova Unified School District was forced to pay $1.7 million in damages after sexual misconduct between two students on school property. An 18-year-old special education student emotionally and sexually abused a 12-year-old child on a bus to a summer program at Cordova High School. 

A bus driver in training saw the alleged abuse but only reported the incident to the district dispatcher instead of the police or Child Protective Services. However, bus drivers are also mandated reporters under California law, meaning that the driver was legally required to report any sexual misconduct. 

Mountain View Whisman School District

In June 2025, Mountain View Whisman School District paid $1.6 million to two former students who were sexually abused by Crittenden Middle School teacher and school administrator Steven Myers. The abuse occurred in the 1970s. Myers also worked at Santa Cruz City Schools, which was forced to pay $4.5 million to two other victims in 2024. 

Tamalpais Union High School District

Tamalpais High School sexual abuse claims center around Normandie Burgos, who allegedly sexually assaulted at least four students at Tamalpais in the late 90s and early 2000s. Burgos was charged with 60 counts of molestation in 2019 after a male athlete secretly recorded him abusing a child. 

Burgos committed countless acts of violence on school grounds, including taking children to a private room, undressing them, and then raping them. One victim recounted that a school administrator saw him being abused but made a joke and walked away. Tamalpais High School District paid $17.4 million to four victims in December 2024. 

San Ramon Valley Unified School District

In July 2025, the San Ramon Valley Unified School District settled two civil lawsuits filed by two former students for almost $7 million. These students were the victims of Ryan Weible, a theater teacher at San Ramon Valley High School, who sexually assaulted his victims on school grounds, in his apartment, and on a school-sponsored field trip to New York City.

The school district became aware of the alleged abuse in 2011 after Weible assaulted a girl in the theater room in the middle of the night. The school’s silent alarm went off, and school district officials arrived to find used condoms in the trash can. The lawsuit alleged that officials reprimanded Weible but did not fire him or encourage the victim to press charges. 

Tragically, more cases of California private school sexual abuse may come to light soon, as Ryan Weible was listed as the assistant head of school for Bentley School, a private K–12 school district, as late as 2024. 

Alum Rock Union School District

Alum Rock Union School District allowed former music teacher Israel Santiago to work at three schools in the district despite numerous complaints of sexual misconduct. The man was convicted in 2023 of multiple counts of child molestation against victims younger than 12 years old. 

According to lawsuits, the district reprimanded Santiago for sexually abusing his students, but instead of reporting him, they only moved him from school to school. There are at least 30 known victims, but even more may come to light. 

Sacramento City Unified School District

In April 2025, Enrique Rodriguez Valladares was sentenced to eight years in prison for 19 counts of sexual abuse for heinous acts committed between 2017 and 2019. The former third-grade teacher worked at Bowling Green Chacon Language and Science Academy, a dual-language immersion school with a primarily immigrant student population. 

According to the lawsuit, multiple child victims complained to the principal about Valladares locking children in his classrooms between 2008 and 2013, but the administration did nothing to protect the victims. The survivors also stated that Valladares weaponized their parents’ immigration status and their low English-language skills to keep them from speaking out. 

Pomona Unified School District

A court awarded a former student of Pomona High School $35 million for sexual assault that occurred in the 1990s. The lawsuit alleged that the unnamed victim saw teachers smoking, drinking, and giving alcohol to minors during a track trip to Las Vegas. The next year, in 1997, track coach Herman Hopson raped her during another trip to Las Vegas. 

She reported the sexual abuse to the Pomona Unified School District, but school officials did nothing and allowed Hopson to keep his job. 

Clovis Unified School District

Clovis Unified School District sexual abuse occurred at Fancher Creek Elementary School and Freedom Elementary School, where a second-grade teacher and convicted sex offender, Neng Yang, worked between 1998 and 2012. In 2012, Yang was arrested for abusing a 7-year-old at Freedom Elementary School, locking the child in a room and videotaping graphic sex acts. Yang was convicted to 38 years in prison in 2014. 

In June 2025, five women brought claims against the school district for failing to protect them from child sexual abuse, even though several of them reported being harmed by Yang. 

Mountain View School District

Six former students were awarded $48 million after being molested at Miramonte Elementary School between the early 2000s and 2017. According to the survivors, the Mountain View School District was aware of sexual abuse going back to the 1990s, but did not remove the perpetrator, Joseph Baldenebro, from his teaching duties. The victims were between 8 and 10 years old at the time of the attacks.

Baldonero was convicted of lewd or lascivious acts with children in 2018 and sentenced to 8 years. In 2022, he was charged with more sex crimes and pleaded no contest, resulting in a sentence of an additional 12 years in 2024. 

Moreno Valley Unified School District

Thomas Lee West, a teacher at Vista Heights Middle School, sexually abused two former students in 1996 and 1997 when they were sixth graders. He was found guilty of child molestation in the early 2000s and was sentenced to at least 52 years in jail. 

In October 2023, a jury awarded the victims $135 million after determining that the Moreno Valley Unified School District failed to protect its students from harm. 

La Sierra Academy

The recent La Sierra Academy sexual abuse cases involve former school counselor Matthew Daniel Johnson, who was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for possession of child sexual abuse material. Johnson admitted to hiding a pen-shaped recording device in the school bathroom located across the hall from his office so that he could film students naked. Some of the explicit photos and videos in his possession featured minors as young as 3 or 5 years old. 

Santa Barbara Unified School District

The Santa Barbara Unified School District refused to take action when Justin Sell, a former assistant coach and security guard at Dos Pueblos High School, assaulted a student. Sell was convicted of felony sex crimes involving multiple boys, with charges including stalking and sexual abuse. A jury awarded one victim $25 million after an investigation determined that the district ignored warnings about Sell’s inappropriate actions.

Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District

Convicted pedophile Scott Waln was allowed to return to Los Alisos Middle School only one academic year after an 11-year-old complained to the school district about his abuse. She stated that Waln lured her into his empty classroom, where it would be difficult for her to escape, and touched her inappropriately. 

Even though police investigated the incident, found it credible, and removed him from the school, Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District allowed him to return the next year, where he went on to molest other girls. Tragically, his first victim had to see him in the hallways throughout her time at the middle school, resulting in further victimization. 

In September 2024, the survivors banded together and sued the school district for their gross negligence. 

Thacher School

According to a claim filed in May 2024, an unnamed Thacher administrator sexually harassed, assaulted, and raped one student multiple times from 1984 to 1988. The lawsuit listed eight Thacher staffers for misconduct against students, ranging from harassing comments to forcible rape. 

There are also eight open cases against Thacher for failing to properly supervise their staff, allowing sexual abuse to go unchecked. One of these was filed by Jennifer Christiansen Vurno of Washington in 2022, claiming that she was raped by a soccer coach in 1996. According to her, the school knew about the coach’s inappropriate conduct more than a decade prior but refused to fire him. 

These claims triggered an 18-month investigation by the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office and Ventura County District Attorney’s Office, which uncovered over 100 instances of abuse at the facility. These cases stretched all the way back to the 1960s, but unfortunately, almost all of them could not be criminally pursued due to statutory limitations and a lack of evidence. 

Thacher itself published a report that investigated the stories alumni shared on social media about misconduct at this isolated private school. There are also two wrongful termination cases being litigated separately, one of which alleges that the school dismissed a former executive assistant out of fear that she knew too much about the misconduct taking place at the school. 

Los Angeles Unified School District

There have been multiple sexual abuse lawsuits against Los Angeles schools in recent years, each alleging that officials allowed predators to roam the halls unchecked. 

The first case involved widespread abuse at Miramonte Elementary School starting back in the 1980s. Former teacher Mark Berndt repeatedly molested children, including feeding them cookies laced with bodily fluids and taking pictures of them with tape over their eyes and mouths, likely to be transmitted to other abusers.

In 2013, Berndt pleaded no contest to lewd acts with children and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. After this, a flood of lawsuits began against Miramonte Elementary School, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in payouts. 

LAUSD agreed to pay $140 million to 81 students who were abused by Berndt and another $30 million to the families of 65 students. In January 2024, the school district agreed to pay $3.55 million to two more survivors. 

However, LAUSD’s litigation fight does not just involve Miramonte Elementary School or Mark Berndt. In another claim, settled in 2023, the district agreed to pay $6.5 million to an anonymous victim who was repeatedly raped and molested by science teacher Jesus Salvador Saenz. 

This suit accused two administrators, Jesus Angulo and Maria Sotomayor, of failing to intervene after the student reported Saenz in 2008. Angulo and Sotomayor failed to report the sexual abuse to the authorities, which allowed Saenz to continue his teaching career. 

Redlands Unified School District

Multiple abusers used this school district as their hunting ground for vulnerable students at Redlands High, Redlands East Valley High, and Citrus Valley High. 

The two lawsuits allege that Melissa Jaques, an athletic trainer, and Joshua Estrada, a volunteer cross-country coach, abused their positions of trust to molest students between 2011 and 2013. Both lawsuits claim that the district was aware of concerns involving these two teachers, but they refused to act or remove either from their duties. 

Pasadena Unified School District

In August 2022, the Pasadena Unified School District was forced to pay $26 million to a former special education student at Focus Point Academy who was assaulted in 2016. According to the suit, the 11-year-old student was left unsupervised by a teacher’s aide. While by herself, she was dragged behind the building by three older students and assaulted. 

Sadly, the student suffered such severe psychological trauma that she had to be institutionalized, all while the school district denied that any assault had taken place. Despite this, the defense argued that the plaintiff had not suffered any damages and should not be awarded anything. 

San Francisco Unified School District

This school district had at least two child molesters working with students, both of whom covered up for one another. In May 2025, the district agreed to pay $1.5 million to a victim of Harlan Edelman, a former teacher and counselor at Lowell High.

According to the San Francisco school sexual abuse lawsuit, Edelman offered to help the student improve his grades to gain his trust, then began assaulting the student in his office and classroom. A female victim reported to Edelman that she had been assaulted by another counselor, and Edelman helped to bury the allegations.

Both the student and his parent reported Edelman to the school, but administrators did nothing. Eventually, Edelman left Lowell High and began working at SFUSD Academy – San Francisco @ McAteer until his resignation in September 2013. In 2014, Edelman was arrested in a sting operation when he posed as a 17-year-old boy and tried to meet up with a potential victim at Mountain View park. 

What California Laws Govern School Sexual Abuse Claims?

School sexual assault claims in California are governed by both state and federal law. 

First, the California Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act (CANRA) identifies who is considered a mandated reporter and requires them to report any suspected abuse to the proper authorities, including law enforcement and Child Protective Services. If they fail to do so, they can be criminally charged or liable in a civil suit.

The California Education Code also outlines a school’s responsibilities to its students. In elementary school and secondary education, teachers and support staff must be trained in how to identify signs of abuse and neglect, including molestation or other exploitation (44691). 

Under the law, any educational professional who suspects abuse must report their concerns to the proper legal authorities, not just their superiors. School districts must provide annual training to every staff member, explaining their legal obligations and how to identify potential exploitation (44691). 

Victims are also protected under federal law, particularly Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. This federal law prohibits sex-based discrimination in any educational institution that receives federal funding and requires reporting of sexual misconduct in any facility, whether that is between students or staff. Schools that fail to report concerns may lose their accreditation status or funding. 

What Damages Can Victims of Sexual Assault Recover?

Sexually abused children often face a lifetime of pain, including post-traumatic stress disorder, physical symptoms, and difficulty trusting others. A civil suit can provide damages such as:

• Medical expenses
• Out-of-pocket medical bills, such as therapy
• Loss of future wages
• Physical pain and suffering
• Emotional distress
• Loss of normal life

Who Can Be Held Liable in School Sex Abuse Cases in California?

Institutions such as Clovis Unified School District or the California School for the Deaf knew that children were being sexually abused on school property, but failed to take action. As such, they and others can be held accountable through lawsuits. Some common defendants in these cases include:

• Individual perpetrators
• Other staff who knew about the abuse
• Third-party contractors, like security guards
• Social workers and other mandated reporters
• Administrators and supervisors who failed to believe child victims
• Unified school districts and other organizations
• Education departments

Our team will determine which individuals and organizations knew about the abuse but refused to take action, incorporating them into your lawsuit and ensuring that each defendant is forced to pay their fair share. 

How Long Do Victims Have to Take Legal Action?

The statute of limitations varies depending on whether this is a civil or criminal case. Common statutes of limitations considered in these cases include the following. 

Criminal Charges

Victims sexually abused before their 18th birthday can file criminal charges until their 40th birthday (§ 801.1). If there is DNA evidence of the abuse, then there is no statute of limitations, and a criminal case can proceed at any time. 

Civil Child Sexual Abuse Lawsuits

AB 452 abolished the statute of limitations for sexually abused minors. However, if the survivor is over the age of 40, then they must submit a certificate of merit from an attorney and a licensed mental health professional, explaining why the case has merit (§ 340.1).

While every sexual abuse lawsuit in California is different, there are several legal principles that may lengthen the time you have to file. One of these is the delayed discovery rule, which was used in the California Supreme Court case Quarry v. Doe I. 

In this case, the individuals had been abused years prior, but only connected their psychological trauma to the abuse in adulthood. Because the injuries did not emerge until years later, the court determined that they had grounds to sue. 

How Injury Lawyer Team Can Help

California school children deserve to learn in an environment free from discrimination or fear. If you or a loved one was sexually assaulted at a California school like Clovis Unified School District or Miramonte Elementary School, we are here to help. Our team will help you file sex abuse lawsuits against perpetrators, school administrators, and unified school districts that failed to prevent child molestation.

We understand the tremendous fear and anxiety that survivors face when pursuing justice for California school abuse. Many students do not come forward with their stories until years later, when key witnesses may have moved or passed away. Additionally, older cases may have statute of limitations concerns or missing evidence.

Through our thorough investigation, we will uncover vital information, such as school records, previous complaints against the perpetrator, employment records, and police reports. Along with your testimony, these will present a convincing narrative demonstrating the district’s vicarious liability and failure to protect its charges. 

We will aggressively negotiate for maximum compensation while also protecting you from negative repercussions, like being forced to face your attacker. If your case goes to trial, we can petition the court to allow you to present testimony remotely through procedural regulations like Rule 3.672. 

Unfortunately, many schools will refuse to admit harm, particularly if they have been forced to pay other settlements. For example, the Los Angeles Unified School District has been faced with multi-million dollar lawsuits, making them unwilling to negotiate. 

We will carefully prepare your case for trial in case we must file a lawsuit and represent you in court. Through our diligence and passionate advocacy, we ensure you have the best possible chance of success. 

Our Super Lawyers®-rated team works on a contingency fee basis, meaning that you owe us nothing unless we win your case. Take the first step in seeking justice: contact us today for a free consultation about your rights.