A judge has approved a $6.8 million settlement of a lawsuit filed against the Walnut Valley Unified School District on behalf of a girl, now 16, who alleged she was sexually abused more than 50 times on campus by fellow students during the 2016-17 and 2017-18 school years.
The plaintiff also maintained that the district subjected her to disparate treatment because she is Black. She is identified only as L.C. in the Pomona Superior Court lawsuit that alleged negligent supervision of minors, racial discrimination, breach of a duty to report suspected child abuse and a violation of the state Civil Code.
On Thursday, Pomona Superior Court Judge Salvatore Sirna signed an order giving his nod to the settlement, then on Monday he directed that the funds be placed into a blocked account. A judge’s consent to the accord was necessary because the plaintiff is a minor.
After attorneys’ fees and other costs are deducted, the plaintiff will receive a net $4.03 million. Court papers seeking approval of the resolution were filed last November, but delays ensued after the plaintiff’s family changed attorneys.
The plaintiff began attending C.J. Morris Elementary School on East Calle Baja Drive in Walnut as a kindergartener in fall 2014. During the 2016-17 school year, she and other second-graders were taken on a field trip to Cal Poly Pomona, the suit stated.
While returning to Morris Elementary, a boy sitting next to the plaintiff forced her to touch him, an act he repeated multiple times on subsequent dates on campus, including in the classroom, according to the suit. He also induced her to commit more serious sexual acts with him, the complaint filed in January 2021 alleged.
When the plaintiff reached the third grade in fall 2017, the same boy who allegedly abused her the previous school year told his male friends what he had done to her, according to the lawsuit.
“Then, he and the other male students — at least five others — proceeded to sexually abuse plaintiff multiple times all over campus, including in (the) classroom, the administration building, the library and the school bathrooms,” the suit stated.
The alleged acts happened more than 50 times “due to complete lack of supervision by plaintiff’s teachers and the administrators at C.J. Morris Elementary School, including Principal Shehzad Bhojani,” the complaint alleged.
In February 2018, Bhojani summoned the girl and her grandmother to his office, where he “expressed disbelief and accused plaintiff of making up what happened,” the suit alleged. Since that time, the plaintiff has been home-schooled and her grandmother pays for a tutor, the suit stated.
The district showed racial prejudice toward the plaintiff by accusing her of making up her accounts of sexual abuse, by failing to adequately punish the boys who attacked her, all but one of whom were not Black, and by not making it safe enough to return to the school without fear of being abused by the same boys, the suit alleged.
Bhojani is no longer the Morris School principal, according to the plaintiff’s court papers.
According to the WVUSD attorneys’ court papers, although the plaintiff alleged she was sexually assaulted more than 50 times on campus, not one such instance was reported to the school employees by anyone and the plaintiff herself never offered a report.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys never asserted that a district employee saw any misconduct regarding the girl, according to the WVUSD lawyers’ court papers.