A Long Beach Unified teacher who is also the husband of a school board member was placed on paid administrative leave Thursday as the district investigates allegations that he sexually abused a student decades ago.<\/p>\n
Rogelio L\u00f3pez, who teaches at John Muir Academy, is accused in a recently filed civil lawsuit of grooming and sexually abusing a student between 1999 and 2001 while he worked at Burcham Elementary School, according to the complaint. Spencer Lucas, the plaintiff\u2019s lead attorney, said L\u00f3pez abused his client multiple times in a classroom while she was in fifth grade.<\/p>\n
L\u00f3pez has been instructed not to comment on the case pending the investigation, according to his wife, school board member Maria Isabel L\u00f3pez. \u201cWe believe that these allegations are unequivocally and categorically false,\u201d she said. \u201cWe look forward to the full investigation to clear his name.\u201d<\/p>\n
The plaintiff, a 35-year-old woman identified in court documents only by the pseudonym Jane Doe, alleges Long Beach Unified \u201cknew or should have known that [Rogelio] L\u00f3pez was a danger to children.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lucas said his client filed a police report against Rogelio L\u00f3pez around 2013 at the age of 22, but nothing came of it. He said he\u2019s still trying to determine why.<\/p>\n
Without the victim\u2019s name and with limited information about exactly when the report was made, the Long Beach Police Department was not immediately able to provide additional information.<\/p>\n
The plaintiff alleges she suffered severe, lasting emotional and physical injuries as a result of the alleged abuse, and she seeks damages from Long Beach Unified for this harm. She is represented by attorneys from the Panish Shea Ravipudi firm, which has won many large personal injury verdicts and settlements in California. Rogelio L\u00f3pez is not named as a defendant.<\/p>\n
The district confirmed it was served with the lawsuit on Wednesday and placed Rogelio L\u00f3pez on leave the next morning.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe recognize that claims of impropriety are deeply concerning. The Long Beach Unified School District does not tolerate misconduct of any kind and remains committed to the safety and well-being of all students and staff in a respectful learning environment,\u201d the district said in a statement sent to the Muir school community.<\/p>\n
Maria Isabel L\u00f3pez questioned the timing of the lawsuit, which was filed while she is campaigning for reelection.<\/p>\n
Maria Isabel L\u00f3pez ran a grassroots campaign for school board District 1 in 2022, defeating a candidate endorsed by the Teachers Association of Long Beach<\/a>, school board president and several city council members. Since her election, Maria Isabel L\u00f3pez has pushed for transparency<\/a> in the district and is often the lone dissenting voice and vote on the board<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWill people go after my husband to get at me?\u201d she asked. \u201cWell, I\u2019m questioning it.\u201d<\/p>\n She pointed out that the Los Angeles County district attorney\u2019s office recently began investigating hundreds of potentially fraudulent sexual abuse claims<\/a> filed against the county. The county and other government agencies have been beset by thousands of claims<\/a> in recent years, many triggered by a 2019 state law that expanded the statute of limitations and created a three-year window for plaintiffs to file claims of child sex abuse that occurred many years ago.<\/p>\n Lucas, the plaintiff\u2019s lawyer, said the lawsuit \u201cis about getting justice for a child who was molested by a teacher. It\u2019s got nothing to do with politics.\u201d Lucas was also lead counsel in a lawsuit against Bill Cosby, who was ordered on Monday to pay $59 million in damages<\/a> for abusing Donna Motsinger in 1972.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Long Beach Unified teacher who is also the husband of a school board member was placed on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":234667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":["post-235752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-long-beach","tag-long-beach","tag-long-beach-headlines","tag-long-beach-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/234667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}