Suit: Teacher assaulted, raped by colleague
Same ex-teacher accused of harassment by another woman four months ago
Four months after a former teacher at Theuerkauf Elementary School sued the Mountain View Whisman School District alleging it failed to protect her from a colleague who had harassed her, another teacher has come forward with her own accusations.
In a lawsuit filed last month in the Santa Clara County Superior Court, a former Theuerkauf teacher — referred to as Jane Doe — asserts that her superiors in the Mountain View Whisman School District failed to prevent her then-colleague, first-grade teacher Bryan Rios, from harassing, assaulting and eventually raping her.
Doe is the second teacher in recent months to sue the district for its handling of Rios, who no longer teaches in the district.
In May, former Theuerkauf teacher Crysti Flowers-Haywood sued the district, claiming she was unlawfully terminated and retaliated against after she spoke out about Rios’ alleged harassment.
The lawsuit alleged that the school district failed to protect Flowers-Haywood from an abusive work environment and to take corrective actions after she filed complaints against Rios, who was later arrested on suspicion of sexual assault in an unrelated case but never faced charges.
A message left on what is believed to be Rios’ phone was not responded to on Monday.
The latest suit states that Doe was hired by the school district in June 2017 as a teacher at Theuerkauf and was forced to share a classroom with Rios, who repeatedly invaded her privacy, objectified her and made sexually offensive comments — both when they were alone and in front of her 7-year-old students — such as telling her about his sexual fantasies of her.
Before Doe’s hiring and her alleged assault, former Theuerkauf Principal Ryan Santiago and Chief Human Relations Officer Carmen Ghysels knew that Rios had a history of sexual misconduct, the suit says.
Rios was placed on administrative leave the year before after allegedly sexually harassing a colleague, yet district officials never warned Doe that he had a history
of preying upon and abusing vulnerable women, the suit states.
Doe allegedly tried to protect herself by setting boundaries, but Rios continued to harass her and, in late October, he took things to the next level.
On Oct. 22, 2017, Rios allegedly “lured” Doe to his home where he “mentally and physically abused her, strangled her, tried to kill her, raped her and sodomized her,” the suit states. As a result, Doe allegedly suffered a series of seizures over the next week.
A few weeks later, Rios allegedly
assaulted Doe on the school grounds because she refused to meet him at his home again.
The suit states that Rios drove his shoulder into Doe’s sternum and knocked the wind out of her, making her “incapacitated for months.”
Doe reported the two separate assaults to the Santa Clara Police Department on Nov. 13, 2017.
Rios, who already had been placed on administrative leave the prior week because of Doe’s allegations, was arrested by the Santa Clara police on Nov. 29 in connection to Doe’s case on suspicion of multiple counts of sexual assault, including forced sodomy and forced oral copulation.
The Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, however, declined to prosecute Rios, citing concerns of “insufficient evidence.”
After Rios’ arrest, Doe was reassigned to Huff Elementary School in January 2018.
At that point, Doe alleges, she was subjected to retaliation from then-Principal Geoff Chang and the Mountain View Whisman School District’s human resources department.
According to the suit, Chang allegedly ignored the restraining order Doe filed against Rios in December 2017 and “mocked her allegation of sexual harassment and assault, made light of her resulting pain and suffering and PTSD and tried to drive her out of the school by micromanaging her work.”
Rios resigned from his position with the district at the end of the 2017-18 school year, but he still holds a valid California teaching certificate, which expires in 2021, according to online records from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.
The attorney representing Doe, Mary Josephine Shea, did not respond to requests for comment Monday.
Shelly Hausman, the district’s public information officer, declined to comment on the pending litigation Monday.
But in May, Hausman wrote in a statement that “any allegation or suggestion that the District terminated or retaliated against any employee for speaking out about Mr. Rios’ alleged conduct is entirely false and misleading.”