District to pay $2 million to sexual abuse victim

The San Jose Unified School District has agreed to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit from a woman who was sexually abused by her Spanish teacher when she was a 17-year-old student in his classroom.

The agreement, announced by the woman's attorney Feb. 10, comes more than three years after then-teacher Ricardo Chavarria was arrested by San Jose police officers and later convicted on six counts of sexually assaulting a minor.

Cristina Nolan, an attorney with Manly, Stewart and Finaldi Lawyers who represented the woman, called the settlement a vindication of the harm done to her client and the failure of school officials to protect her.

“We hope that this shows San Jose Unified — and all school districts — that they need to do a better job at keeping their students safe,” Nolan said. “This is a massive problem, and it stems from a lack of supervision, lack of accountability and lack of reporting.”

San Jose Unified did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Chavarria was hired by the San Jose Unified School District in August 2001 and taught Spanish at Pioneer High School in the city's Almaden Valley neighborhood.

The former student first met Chavarria as a sophomore student in his Spanish class at Pioneer High School. After spending a year in his class, she became Chavarria's teacher's assistant for her junior and senior years, the suit said. Chavarria began grooming the woman and ultimately sexually abusing her inside his classroom both during and after school hours, according to the lawsuit.

Chavarria sexually abused and molested the student over the span of four months — from October 2018 until his arrest in January 2019, according to the lawsuit.

He was arrested in late January and booked into Santa Clara County Jail on four counts of sexual penetration with a person under the age of 18 and three counts of oral copulation with a person under the age of 18.

Although the district immediately placed Chavarria on unpaid leave following his arrest, the lawsuit claimed that school officials ignored “multiple red flags” that could have prevented the abuse.

By failing to properly supervise Chavarria and take “reasonable measures to prevent sexual harassment, molestation and abuse of minors,” attorneys representing the woman argued that the district made it “a virtual certainty” that he would victimize the student and her peers.

When convicted, Chavarria was given a fiveyear probation deal with conditions that included a year of jail time, national sex offender registration and payment of court fines and fees. Failure to adhere to his probation conditions could result in a sentence of up to five years and four months in prison, according to court records.