In new court papers, attorneys for a man who alleges that his female Roosevelt High School Spanish teacher sexually abused him say the teacher did the same thing to other students, including one who moved in with her and her then-boyfriend at their Rowland Heights home.
The plaintiff is identified only as John Doe in the Los Angeles Superior Court suit against the Los Angeles Unified School District, which alleges sexual abuse of a minor, sexual assault and battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, negligent supervision of a minor and failure to report suspected child abuse.
The teacher, Gabriela Cortez, was sentenced in 2013 to five years probation after pleading guilty to six felony sex charges involving two other former LAUSD students for abuses that occurred between September 2009 and November 2010.
Cortez has denied all of Doe’s allegations. In their court papers seeking dismissal of Doe’s suit, LAUSD attorneys say Doe admits that he knows of no LAUSD employees who witnessed any inappropriate contact between him and Cortez, establishing that the district had no knowledge of Cortez’s alleged misconduct.
But in court papers filed Wednesday with Judge Holly Fujie, Doe’s attorneys allege that Cortez abused a total of four boys during her 10 years at Roosevelt High School and that the LAUSD failed to supervise the teacher and her alleged victims.
“The blatant red flags of abuse were ignored by district employees,” according to Doe’s attorneys’ court papers, which were filed in response to the district’s dismissal motion. “Cortez’s abuse of these minors was entirety preventable.”
Years earlier, Cortez allegedly sexually abused another boy while she was living at the time with another Roosevelt High teacher who helped her buy the Rowland Heights residence, according to Doe’s attorneys’ court papers.
The student moved into the home after he graduated and lived with Cortez, her minor child and the other teacher, where he slept in the same bedroom as Cortez without the other teacher fulfilling his mandatory duty to report such conduct, the plaintiff’s lawyers further state.
“Further, the following school year, (the student) would go to Roosevelt and spend the day in Cortez’s classroom despite no longer being a student there,” according to Doe’s attorneys’ court papers, which further state that administration officials never bothered to check the obviously unusual circumstance of a graduated student sitting in a teacher’s classroom.
In a sworn declaration, the student’s brother recalled what he considered an atypical living situation at Cortez’s home in 1999-2000.
“It was my understanding that (the other teacher) was Ms. Cortez’s ex-boyfriend and he was also a teacher at Roosevelt,” the brother said. “The reason why I remember this individual being at Ms. Cortez’s house when I would go over there is because I found it weird that she was living with an ex-boyfriend.”
Doe was in his junior year at Roosevelt High in the 2004-05 school year and Cortez, then in her 30s, was his Spanish teacher, according to his suit brought in January 2024.
“She immediately took an interest in plaintiff and began grooming and conditioning him with the specific intent of manipulating his emotions and taking advantage of his young age so that she could ultimately sexually abuse him,” the suit alleges.
Doe had Cortez as a Spanish teacher again in his senior year and she allegedly continued her pattern of grooming and conditioning him, in part by sharing information about her personal life in her classroom during school hours, the suit states.
Cortez also coerced Doe into telling her about himself and she eventually flirted openly with Doe by touching him, the suit alleges.
“This culminated in Cortez sexually abusing plaintiff on numerous occasions during the first semester of his senior year while he was a minor,” the suit states.
Doe had panic attacks during his senior year, including one so severe on graduation day that he could not participate in the proceedings, according to the suit, which further states he has suffered both emotional distress and economic losses.
A hearing on the LAUSD’s dismissal motion is scheduled for July 25.