A woman is suing Los Angeles Unified, alleging she was sexually molested as a minor by a staff member of an after-school program more than 20 years ago, but did not confide in anyone until she told her mother years later.
The plaintiff is identified only as Jane Doe in the Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit that alleges four different levels of negligence. She seeks unspecified damages in the suit brought Nov. 21.
“This case seeks to vindicate the rights of a survivor who unnecessarily suffered abuse by an employee of the defendants while in the care and custody of defendants,” the suit states.
A district spokesman said Monday that the LAUSD does not comment on pending litigation. According to Doe’s complaint, from the ages of 9 to 11 she was a student at Dolores Street Elementary School and she attended an after-school run by a third party at Bonita Street Elementary School in 2003-05.
Doe’s abuser was allegedly a staff member and bus driver for the third party and he supervised Doe and other students, the suit states. He began to groom Doe and other minors and singled out the plaintiff and another student to teach them sex acts during lunch time at another building, the suit states.
The alleged abuser required Doe and another student to inappropriately touch each other and he also told Doe that her private parts would change as she aged, the suit states. Doe’s abuser was not properly supervised and administrators knew or should have known or suspected the man’s alleged criminal behavior given the unsupervised time he spent with Doe and other children, the suit states.
Doe did not report the alleged abuse to the staff members at the time of the abuse but did confide in her mother later in life, according to her suit. Doe has suffered severe emotion distress, embarrassment, loss of self-esteem, shame, difficulty in sustaining intimate relationships as well as a loss of earnings and earning capacity, according to her complaint.