OJAI, Calif. (KNX) – A former student claiming she was expelled after reporting sexual assault by the headmaster has filed a lawsuit against the Thacher School in Ojai, California. The unnamed student claimed the official stalked and molested her.
The plaintiff, referred to as simply Jane Doe, said the school’s headmaster, William “Bill” Wyman, groped and made sexual comments to her in 1982 when she was 13 years old, according documents reviewed by the Los Angeles Times. Now 53-years old, the woman
“I was 13 when I arrived at Thacher in the fall of 1982. I was an outgoing girl with good grades and was looking forward to a life of horses, making new friends and escaping an unhappy home environment which I now see made me a target of abuse,” she said during a press conference Wednesday alongside high-profile attorney Gloria Allred.
"Doe" alleged Wyman would call her “his special girl," follow her from her dorm around campus, groped her breasts, and "stroked" her inappropriately. When she complained about his behavior to leadership, she said the school told her not to come back — expelling her.
Wyman served as headmaster at the roughly $65,000-a-year school from 1975 through 1992. He died in 2014.
This lawsuit comes one year after the school hired a law firm to investigate allegations against the school. The 91-page report contained interviews with over 120 former students, parents, and current and former faculty and staff, The Associated Press said.
No one in that report was charged. Doe said reading that full report compelled her to tell her story.
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