The Moreno Valley Unified School District is inching toward a trial that will determine if it failed to protect an autistic teen who was sexually assaulted on a school bus by another student with a history of deviant and violent behavior.
Although a lawyer for the district was optimistic that a lawsuit filed by the victim’s grandparents can still be settled, for now a trial has been scheduled for July 8 in Riverside County Superior Court.
The grandparents, who also are legal guardians of the victim, sued Moreno Valley in June 2020, alleging the district breached its mandatory duty to protect their grandson. His assailant had 37 documented incidents of discipline from kindergarten through high school, including exposing himself to another student and kicking a student in the groin, said attorney Brian Kabateck, who represents the plaintiffs.
The boy, who like the victim was a special-needs student, was expelled following the October 2019 incident aboard the school bus, according to attorneys for the victim and his grandparents. Since then, he has pleaded no contest in Juvenile Court to one felony count of oral copulation with someone under the age of 18.
Inexplicably, despite the boy’s history of abuse and the felony conviction for a sex crime, the school board voted unanimously in 2020 to allow him to return to the district as a student, Kabateck said. Whether he was enrolled at a particular school was unknown.
Kabateck says his efforts to settle the case have thus far been unsuccessful.
“I think there has to be a change in their attitude and a willingness to have a real conversation, not just about money, but about their practices and to make sure this doesn’t happen to anybody in the future,” Kabateck said. “And if they don’t want to have this conversation, we’ll go to trial.”
Molested on bus
The victim was a 17-year-old student at Vista del Lago High School when the bus incident occurred on Oct. 21, 2019. He was sitting next to a girl when the perpetrator, then 15 years old, stood up and walked toward them. He told the girl to move, then took her place next to the boy, Kabateck said.
“He grabbed our client’s cellphone and started to pull up pornography,” Kabateck said. At that point, the assailant unzipped his pants and forced the boy to orally copulate him. Kabateck said one student on the bus reported hearing the victim say “stop!” multiple times.
It was unclear why the bus driver, who is not identified in the lawsuit, did not do anything, or whether he even was aware what was even going on. Marina Pacheco, another attorney representing the plaintiffs, does not believe the bus driver was ever disciplined, and said he was criticized in a prior performance evaluation for being deficient in “pupil management.”
“The bus driver had been previously cited in his performance evaluation for not watching the students,” Kabateck said. “They need to understand this is not OK and they need to put more safeguards in place.”
Michael Marlatt, the attorney representing the school district, said he could not comment on the bus driver or the incident, citing the ongoing litigation and employee and student confidentiality.
Principal unaware
Eric Swanson, who was principal of Vista Del Lago High School in 2019, was unaware of the perpetrator’s troubled history of attacking and bullying other students, according to an excerpt from a deposition he gave in the case.
Questioned by Pacheco during the deposition, Swanson confirmed several incidents from the student’s file that occurred from 2012 to 2016 at Chaparral Hills Elementary School and Landmark Middle School. Included was inappropriately touching a student and exposing himself to another student.
Much of the problematic behavior occurred on school buses, yet the district did not see to it that the student was monitored appropriately, according to the attorneys for the plaintiffs.
Marlatt said he could not comment on whether the student was disciplined because that information would be confidential.
Policies and procedures
Marlatt also would not say whether the district took any preventative action or adopted new safeguards to protect students following the assault in October 2019. “Because of the litigation right now, we would not want to address that specifically,” he said.
But he did say, “Any time information and allegations come forward such as in this litigation, the district always revisits policies and procedures, and when appropriate makes a decision whether or not something needs to be changed.”
Kabateck said he’s hopeful the district will take the appropriate action and propose an agreement that would not only include monetary compensation, but preventative measures to ensure other students are not harmed.
“But if they think this is a no-harm, no-foul situation,” he said, “then let’s have a jury decide.”
Marlatt said he is hopeful a trial can be avoided. “We are willing to sit down with them and discuss a resolution that will be mutually acceptable to all the parties,” he said.
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