$102M to Pay California Students Abused by Teacher

A jury has awarded $102.5 million to two women who sued a Northern California school district over what they said was officials’ failure to stop a middle school teacher from sexually grooming and abusing them as minors. Parents had repeatedly complained about the former music teacher, who was sentenced to more than 50 years in prison.

The two plaintiffs said they were repeatedly abused by former music teacher Samuel Neipp while students at a San Jose middle school starting in 2009 for one student and 2014 for the other, The Mercury News reported. The women, identified as Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2, were awarded $65 million and $37.5 million in damages, respectively, announced Tuesday in the Santa Clara County Superior Court.

Lauren Cerri, an attorney who represented Doe 1, said the verdict shows community intolerance for a school district that puts its reputation and image above the safety of children.

“Parents who complained year after year, that he’s a predator, they didn’t do a thing, and should have fired him years before,” Cerri told the Mercury News. “This verdict holds them fully accountable, and says this should have never happened and was so easily preventable.”

Neipp was arrested in 2017 after Doe 1 told police that he had threatened to post nude images of her online. She told police that starting around 2014, when she was 13 and a student at Dartmouth Middle School in San Jose, Neipp sent her text messages saying he found her attractive and spent time with her alone in his office, later engaging in sex acts with her. She also said Neipp continued to sexually abuse her as a high school student when she visited the Dartmouth campus.

Doe 2 contacted police after seeing news about Neipp’s arrest. She told police that around 2009 when she was a middle school student Neipp began sending text messages and emails to her, regularly spending time alone with her in his classroom, and arranged for her to be his classroom aide. She told investigators that Neipp began making sexually suggestive remarks, held her hand, and kissed and touched her while they were alone together in his classroom. She also alleged that the abuse continued after she graduated and visited the middle school.

Both women sued the Union School District in 2019 and accused administrators of mishandling or downplaying the teacher’s misconduct. Their lawsuits, which were consolidated into a single trial, said that district officials admonished Neipp but never formally punished him. He continued to receive exemplary performance reviews and was granted tenure before his arrest.

In September 2019, Neipp pleaded no contest to a dozen criminal charges related to the sexual abuse and received a 56-year prison sentence. Neipp, 39, is currently at the California Correctional Institution in Kern County, southeast of Bakersfield.

Superintendent Carrie Andrews, who took over the Union School District last summer, did not address the verdict in a statement but wrote: “I want our community to know that the safety of our students will always be our top priority.”

Topics California