VAN NUYS (CNS) – A woman has dropped the Archdiocese of Los Angeles as a defendant in a lawsuit in which she alleges she was sexually abused by a male pupil at Notre Dame High School more than 20 years ago and that the school administration was “indifferent” to her complaints because the alleged perpetrator was a star athlete.
Attorneys for the woman, identified only as Jane Roe, filed court papers on Monday with Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Wendy Wilcox asking that all of the plaintiff’s claims against the archdiocese be dismissed.
On Aug. 4, Roe’s attorneys made a similar dismissal request regarding the Congregation of the Holy Cross, 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.
The decisions to drop the parts of the case against the archdiocese and the Congregation of the Holy Cross were made “without prejudice,” meaning they can possibly be brought back as defendants later.
Roe’s decision to drop the part of the case against the archdiocese came as a Jan. 13 hearing is pending on the entity’s attorney’s request for dismissal of all causes of action against it. The lawyers maintained the archdiocese did not have oversight of Notre Dame High and blamed her decision to sue the religious organization on “anti-Catholic animus.”
Notre Dame High, which was also sued by Roe, opened in Sherman Oaks in 1947 as an all-boys school and became coed in the 1983-84 school year. Roe’s lawsuit alleges various forms of negligence as well as intentional infliction of emotional distress. The trial of the case is scheduled for March 8, 2027.
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 filed May 16 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 [the] 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, now 40, that 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.