Notre Dame High School and the Congregation of the Holy Cross religious order are being sued by a woman who alleges she was sexually abused by a male pupil more than 20 years ago and that the school administration was "indifferent" to her complaints because the alleged perpetrator was a star athlete.
The plaintiff is identified only as Jane Roe in the Van Nuys Superior Court lawsuit, which alleges negligence, failure to warn and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Roe, who turns 40 on Tuesday, seeks unspecified damages and attorneys' fees.
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The Congregation of the Holy Cross is an Indiana-based Catholic clerical religious order within the Roman Catholic Church that built the school in order to carry out its mission of educating and evangelizing, according to the suit, which further states that the Sherman Oaks campus opened in 1947 as an all-boys school and became coed in the 1983-84 school year.
Representatives for the religious order and the school did not immediately reply to requests for comment on the suit brought Friday.
Roe was a freshman in 2000 and met a male classmate described in her suit as a "star student athlete" who, like the plaintiff, took band classes and is identified in her court papers only as T.K.
"It was common knowledge at the school that the sports program athletes were favored among the administration and staff," the suit states. "As a result, it was common knowledge that athletes were given preferential treatment."
Drummers, including the plaintiff, were often sent out of the band room to practice with minimal adult supervision, which T.K. took advantage of when it came to Roe, the suit states.
"Perpetrator's sexual abuse of plaintiff was recurrent and prolific," the suit states. "He tormented plaintiff during band practices," including inappropriately touching Roe under her skirt, according to the suit.
Roe believes the school administration knew that T.K. assaulted another minor girl off campus during a 2001 party, resulting in the other girl's father taking out a restraining order against T.K., the suit states. However, the administration "took no further action to supervise T.K. or otherwise protect female students at the school," the suit states.
When Roe complained to an adult school employee about T.K., the employee "merely told plaintiff that she should just tell him she wanted him to stop," the suit states. In addition, when Roe disclosed T.K.'s alleged abuses in 2001 to the school principal and other administrators, T.K. was told to apologize, but nothing more was done to protect Roe, and the principal told the plaintiff to avoid T.K. during class, the suit states.
Another administrator told Roe she "didn't want to hear about the complaints anymore," the suit states.
In response to Roe's complaints to administrators, T.K. stepped up his alleged misconduct against her, forcing her into intimate acts against her will and causing her emotional health to worsen, the suit alleges.
"This deterioration was compounded by the school's failure to take action when she reported the abuse and by the clear sense that the school was indifferent to her safety," the suit states. "She felt deeply betrayed, unsafe and humiliated."
Roe continues to suffer emotional distress and has also experienced lost earnings, the suit states.
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