The first year of high school is always exciting, a sign that you’re almost a grown up who will soon be forging your own path in life.
That’s how sexual assault survivor “Jane Doe” felt when she joined the Los Gatos High School Girls’ Track team in 1998: the world was her oyster and her future was bright.
San Jose, CA – Jan. 5, 2021 – The law firm of Cerri, Boskovich & Allard is announcing the filing of a sexual abuse lawsuit against Valley Christian High School (Santa Clara County Superior Court) and its former coach, Greg Marshall.
The lawsuit alleges that Coach Marshall began sexually abusing girls on his varsity girls’ basketball team almost as soon as he was hired in the 2001-2002 school year.
The sexual abuse lawsuit brought forth by Olympian Ariana Kukors Smith has been resolved nearly two years after Mrs. Kukors Smith filed the action. The monetary settlement reached by USA Swimming’s insurance companies and Mrs. Kukors Smith will allow the 2012 Olympian to re-focus on the sport that she loves and to begin healing.
“I am glad that we were able to come to a resolution to this difficult process. As I begin the next chapter of my life, I hope that these last two years, along with the efforts of so many others, will help to provide athletes with a safer environment in which to compete,” Mrs. Kukors Smith said.
USA Swimming added the following: Throughout this process, Mrs. Kukors Smith has shown incredible strength and bravery and offered a powerful voice to all survivors. In sharing her story, Mrs. Kukors Smith thrust the very important subject matter of sexual abuse within youth serving organizations into focus and furthered important dialogue about the continued need for robust athlete protection policies and strong athlete and parent education.
When “W.S.” met Coach Normandie Burgos he was just seven years old, a young boy who was good at tennis and wanted to get better.
There’s no disputing that Burgos wanted W.S. to become a great tennis player – he repeatedly told W.S.’s parents that he was a “champion.” But as the years passed, W.S. grew up and Coach Burgos began to want more.
With the month of August signaling the start of another school year, the San Jose law firm of Cerri, Boskovich & Allard is urging parents and school officials to be aware of teachers who exhibit predatory “red flag” behavior, which almost always precedes the sexual abuse of a student.
“Sexual predators signal their intent to sexually abuse a student by slowly crossing the boundaries established to protect students,” said former San Jose police sergeant and sex crimes detective Mike Leininger. “The reality is that predators are not caught abusing children, but they can be caught breaking rules and crossing boundaries if educators and parents know what to look for.”
The San Jose Unified School District is facing a sexual abuse lawsuit filed on behalf of two former Willow Glen Middle School girls, victims of photographs taken by former Physical Education teacher and coach Clifford Pappadakis. The photos, taken unknowingly, showed the girls in compromising and/or sexual positions, with some zoomed in on the minors’ private areas.
Photographs found on Pappadakis’ District-issued laptop included many captioned images of minors in sexually suggestive poses. Pappadakis was criminally charged and convicted in 2018 for possessing child porn and taking sexually provocative photos of his students.
The January 2019 arrest of Stockton Swim Club Coach Shunichi Fujishima has exposed yet another youth athletic organization that ignored its duty to protect the children in its care.
Fujishima, 23, faces criminal charges that he had unlawful sexual intercourse with a 12-year-old girl he was coaching at the Stockton Swim Club. The club is now listed as “permanently closed” on the social media site Yelp.
Fujishima was also charged with committing lewd and lascivious acts upon a child and possession of child pornography. He remains incarcerated in the San Joaquin County jail on $1.8 million bond.
Another San Francisco Bay Area Track Coach is facing sexual abuse charges following his arrest. Chioke Robinson, San Francisco State Women’s Track and Field coach, was arrested by San Jose Police on several counts of child sexual abuse. Robinson coached at both Piedmont Hills and Los Gatos High Schools before coaching at San Francisco State.
Robinson is charged with the sexual abuse of four minors, ages 12, 15, 17 and 17. He was arrested by the San Jose Police Department’s Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force / Child Exploitation Detail (CED).
According to a San Jose Police Department press release, the investigation revealed that between the years 1999 and 2011, Robinson sexually assaulted the victims.
The sexual abuse legal team at Cerri, Boskovich & Allard is investigating claims that former Valley Christian High School coach allegedly committed sexual abuse crimes against two minors. Call our office if you are or a loved one have been a victim of San Jose coach Greg Marshall.
The San Jose Mercury News is reporting that “multiple former female athletes reached out to the San Jose Police Department’s Child Exploitation Detail.”
Lawsuit seeks a court order to force the District to implement proactive preventative measures to better protect students from being sexually abused by educators.
A ground breaking lawsuit filed by childhood sexual abuse lawyers Robert Allard and Lauren Cerri of the law firm of Cerri, Boskovich & Allard alleges that top Union School District officials ignored numerous “red flag” warning signs for almost a decade that then Dartmouth Middle School teacher Samuel Neipp was grooming and sexually abusing his students.
The lawsuit seeks a court order mandating that the District implement new policies that would result in either immediate suspension without pay or termination for all personnel who violate rules or regulations designed to protect children. For example, the lawsuit is asking that all employees communicate with students using only district issued email addresses and that personal communication via phone, text or social media be prohibited. The lawsuit is also requesting that the court mandate that the District educate and train all employees, students and teachers on the grooming behavior of child predators and remove door locks from all teacher’s offices, which are located inside their classrooms.
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