School of Rock facing lawsuit over former teacher
Accusations include sexual abuse, negligence, sexual harassment
PALO ALTO >> A San Jose-based law firm is suing the Palo Alto School of Rock for negligence, accusing the school of allowing a 35-year-old teacher to allegedly commit sex crimes against a 14-year-old girl.
A civil lawsuit filed a week ago by Corsiglia, McMahon and Allard charges the Palo Alto music school and its franchiser with protecting former teacher John Patrick Root of San Francisco, who was arrested in 2017 for having an inappropriate relationship with one of his students.
In June 2018, Root pleaded guilty to multiple counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a child and served one year in Santa Clara County jail after which he was registered as a sex offender. The civil lawsuit seeks general damages and other non-economic relief and accuses Root and the school with sexual abuse of a minor, negligence and sexual harassment.
“Root never should have been allowed to step foot in a School of Rock classroom, particularly where he would have private access to children”, said attorney Bob Allard, whose firm is representing the girl, who is now 17. “A routine Google search would have revealed that he was intimately engaged in pornography. His old friend Archuleta surely knew about this as well as his history of using hardcore drugs.”
Attorneys suing the school said this case is particularly egregious because School of Rock “did not suspend or fire Root” when the school’s coowner Felix Archuleta — who is a childhood friend of Root — learned that Root had romantic feelings for his underage female student who he started teaching in Feb. 2016.
Archuleta and Jackson Lynn, who was also co-owner of the Palo Alto school, are no longer associated with School of Rock, the company said in a statement.
“Student safety is our first priority, and when we were made aware by our Palo Alto franchisees that their employee breached our code of conduct and put a child at risk, we worked closely with law enforcement to investigate,” said the School of Rock corporate office in a statement. “The franchise owners of the Palo Alto location at the time of the incident are no longer part of our system. Every day, we continuously focus our efforts on student safety and insist our franchisees do the same.”
The suit says that Root had a verifiable history of drug abuse, mental illness and sexual perversion — including an online pornographic video of himself — that “should have disqualified him from working alone with children.”
Attorneys say that Root used his position of influence to ingratiate himself with the girl and groom her for subsequent sexual abuse or exploitation.
According to the lawsuit, Root began grooming the girl when he talked to her about a friend dying in the Ghost Ship warehouse fire of 2016, gave her advice on personal relationships, told her she was his favorite student and that she was “wise beyond her years.” He also allegedly gave her mixtapes and communicated with her over social media.
Root was also permitted by the school to take the girl to unsupervised off-site locations during her scheduled private lessons — a violation of School of Rock’s policies.
At some point between January and July 2017, Root’s relationship with the girl became more explicit.
Attorneys say that Root told
the girl he wanted to have sex with her, exchanged sexually explicit messages and photographs with her and pressured her to engage in sexual acts with him.
The girl said she got a urinary tract infection after having sex with Root in May and June 2017.
Becoming concerned about the relationship between her daughter and Root, the girl’s mother in early 2017 said she contacted Archuleta and told him that the two were getting too close and it was getting to be inappropriate.
The suit also stated that Archuleta told Root
to “keep it to the music, man,” during a meeting on the allegations, and told the girl’s mother that there would be a refresher training on proper boundaries between teachers and students. When the mother suggested that Root be terminated, Archuleta said Root “is an old friend.”
This suit is not the first leveled against national School of Rock franchise — Because We Rock, LLC — for hiring alleged sex abusers.
“We know there have been at least five other child sex abuse cases that occurred between 2014 and 2017 involving School of Rock franchises,” Allard said. “They not only enabled abuse, but worse they didn’t police despite red flags being all over the
place. Instead, we believe that they tried to cover it up to protect the reputation of their business. In doing so, they acted with reckless disregard for their students’ safety.”
Mark Boskovich, who is also representing the family, said the firm is looking for accountability.
“Accountability for not only this man but for the local school too,” Boskovich said. “We’re obviously looking for monetary damages to pay for this young girl’s treatment moving forward. But we want accountability from the school and the company Because We Rock. They put their kids in the hands of teachers who were not properly vetted and then did one-on-one lessons with these kids. It was a recipe for disaster.”