School district knew Normandie Burgos was a sexual predator but allowed him to continue teaching and coaching.
Normandie Burgos is a disgraced tennis coach who was convicted of 60 counts of sexual abuse in 2019 and is now serving 255 years in prison.
Essentially, it’s a life sentence for the 56-year-old predator who faces three civil lawsuits recently filed by Cerri, Boskovich & Allard.
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.
David W. Chen from the New York Times takes a look at the US Tennis Association and its failure to protect young athletes from a serial sexual predator. Read the USTA Burgos story in full. Here is a summary:
According to the New York Times, with growing cases of sexual misconduct between sports coaches and athletes, the United States Olympic Committee reported, in September 2014, that all sports, except tennis, had taken the initiative to protect athletes from abusers. At the time, Gordon Smith, the tennis association’s executive director, and chief operating officer, “objected to a ‘single mandatory national entity’ overseeing abuse cases across federations.” Adding that “a sport should be able to ‘opt-out of the centralized structure’ if it could police itself.”
The problem with self-policing has shown, however, that many abusers fall through the cracks. Just a few months before this 2014 meeting, a U.S.T.A. tennis coach, Normandie Burgos, had been arrested for abusing one of his athletes. Unfortunately, it was not his first time facing criminal charges for sexual misconduct. Source: New York Times
The three lawsuits that were filed in early June 2020 are the latest volley against USA Swimming, which has come under fire for decades for condoning a culture that allowed young girls to be repeatedly abused by their coaches.
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.
Over the past 20 years, the Center for Disease Control has researched the relationship between childhood trauma and illnesses developed later in life. Traumatic experiences such as abuse or neglect, witnessing violence at home, or family with mental illness or substance abuse all had lasting negative impacts. The CDC called these events, Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs). Their most recent study included 144,000 surveys, collected from respondents in 25 states from 2015-2017. These surveys included topics such as health problems, childhood experiences with divorce, abuse, domestic violence, drugs in the home, and mental illness. Crimes such as sexual abuse would also fall into the category of ACEs.
ACEs negatively impact a child, but the CDC wanted to know how these events might have triggered illnesses and preventable conditions later in life. If ACEs never occurred, issues such as coronary heart disease, depression and suicide, weight issues, substance abuse, decreased education or work opportunities, poor maternal health, cancer, or sexually transmitted diseases might be potentially preventable. Researchers could not rule out other factors, such as financial stress. Still, Jim Mercy, who oversees the CDC violence protection program, says, “there’s a lot of evidence connecting these things…and it’s become clear that the more harmful incidents a child suffers, the more likely their health suffers later.”
For decades, powerful institutions have used legal loopholes to evade accountability by blocking sexual abuse victims from filing lawsuits for justice. But Assembly Bill 218 (AB 218) is now the law. It changes everything for thousands of victims who were previously sexually abused or assaulted by teachers, coaches, counselors, janitors, childcare workers, clergy, or bus drivers to name a few.
Effective Jan. 1, 2020, a three-year “look back window” will open for previously time barred claims and it will extend the civil statute of limitations to age 40, allowing victims to file a civil lawsuit against schools, sports organizations, youth groups, childcare centers, or any other institution that violated their trust.
The attorneys at Cerri, Boskovich & Allard are recognized as one of the best sexual abuse law firms in the country. Call 408-289-1417 for a free and confidential consultation.
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.
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