Former BUSD student says teacher molested him in 1990s

A former student has sued the Berkeley Unified School District, alleging a computer teacher abused him in class in the 1990s at what was then LeConte Elementary School. Credit: Nancy Rubin

A former student has filed a lawsuit against the Berkeley Unified School District alleging that his fourth grade computer teacher molested him in class almost three decades ago at what was then LeConte Elementary School.

The anonymous former student, now 39 and listed in court records as John Doe, filed a complaint accusing the district of negligence in Alameda County Superior Court on July 23. The plaintiff claims the teacher groomed him for sexual abuse before molesting him “on a daily basis” during class at the school, now known as Sylvia Mendez Elementary.

The teacher is not named as a defendant, and is no longer listed in BUSD directories. He has not been charged with any crime in Alameda County, according to court records, and did not return messages seeking comment.

BUSD had not filed a formal response as of Monday, and spokespeople for the district did not respond to inquiries from Berkeleyside.

BUSD teacher accused of molestation during class

Once the teacher had gained the student’s “trust and admiration,” he began molesting the student “on a daily basis,” according to the complaint, something he could do in class since the layout of the computer lab and the large monitors in it obscured students’ views of one another.

The man reported what the teacher had done to school officials that same year but they took no action, according to the complaint and his attorney, Mary Alexander. 

Alexander declined to say whether the Berkeley Police Department or any other law enforcement agency ever investigated the allegations against the teacher.

At the very least, the district “should have prevented [the teacher] from being alone with students, unsupervised, in computer class,” the complaint reads. Even after the man reported the molestation, the district “failed to supervise [the teacher] around students,” letting the teacher continue to molest the plaintiff and other boys, according to the complaint. The complaints did not detail specific allegations of assaults involving other victims.

The former student has asked for monetary damages for medical expenses and therapy, pain and suffering, emotional distress and lost wages, as well as court costs.

Alexander said the school district had a responsibility to protect its students. 

“They let the lion in, and that’s who we want to hold responsible,” she said in a phone interview Friday.

Other BUSD teachers have been accused of abuse

Allegations of sex abuse by former staff members have plagued BUSD in recent years.

There has been a surge in sex abuse lawsuits against school districts throughout California since a 2020 law pushed back the time limit to file, allowing victims to make claims up until they turn 40. Citing rising costs to public school districts, lawmakers in Sacramento have tried, so far unsuccessfully, to curtail who can sue and when.

In 2024 BUSD agreed to a $13.5 million settlement with nine former Berkeley High School students who had accused a former science teacher and football coach of sexual abuse.

In 2022, a former student accused a music teacher at what was then Lincoln Elementary School of abusing the student throughout 1967; the school is now Malcolm X Elementary. That student claimed BUSD failed to stop the teacher’s abuse despite the teacher’s “reputation for abusing minors,” something the student said was “common knowledge.” BUSD denied any wrongdoing, and the case was settled out of court in December.

Another ex-student claimed the same year that a Malcolm X Elementary discipline officer abused him and several classmates throughout 1995 in “an isolated basement room” where the officer oversaw detention. BUSD denied any wrongdoing, and a judge threw the case out and awarded BUSD $939.22 court costs and fees in 2024 when the ex-student failed to appear for trial.

Two other former LeConte students claimed in another 2022 lawsuit that a teacher’s aide there sexually abused them in the 1980s. BUSD denied any wrongdoing, and the case was settled out of court in November.

Also in 2022, BUSD settled for $365,000 with a student who claimed in 2020 that another student had tried to rape her in an unsupervised classroom. The student who sued claimed the district knew the other student had assaulted at least six other victims, which the district denied.

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