A judge is mulling a request by a former water polo teammate of a Black onetime student who is suing Harvard-Westlake School to strike portions of the plaintiff’s complaint as prejudicial.,
Plaintiff Aidan Romain alleges he was subjected to repeated incidents of sexual assault and racial attacks and whipped with exercise bands in the weight room.
The Alhambra Superior Court lawsuit targets the Studio City school, its president, Romain’s former coach and ex-teammate Lucca Van Der Woude. The abuse was allegedly part of a longtime culture in which violence and humiliation were made normal and enabled through the school’s coaching staff and administration.
Alhambra Superior Court Judge Joel L. Lofton issued a tentative ruling Thursday granting part of Van Der Woude’s request, then heard arguments before taking the issues under submission.
In his tentative decision, Lofton said he is leaning toward granting the motion to strike insofar as they pertain to contents of “juvenile restitution instruments” or disclose juvenile “case-file identifiers” drawn from those materials. Lofton further said he is leaning toward allowing Roman’s attorneys to “re-plead non-protected facts without attaching or reciting the contents of juvenile case-file materials.”
In his lawsuit, Romain alleges that from August 2022 until February 2024, while a minor, he was sexually assaulted, harassed and humiliated by Van Der Woude and other Harvard-Westlake water polo teammates, often in the presence of Harvard-Westlake employees. Van Der Woude’s alleged misconduct occurred in the weight room and under the pool water surface, the suit further states.
Romain and Van Der Woude are both now adults and have left Harvard-Westlake.
Attorneys for the school, water polo coach Jack Grover and school President Richard B. Commons stated in their previous court papers that Romain’s claims for negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil rights violations are not supported.
The lawyers said the only allegations concerning the president are that he was previously a headmaster at another school where sexual abuse allegedly took place between students.