SANTA CLARA — Mission School has agreed to pay $7.6 million to settle a lawsuit from a bodily and mentally disabled girl that claims the college failed to guard her from an teacher charged with raping and sexually assaulting her, in accordance with the girl’s attorneys.
The plaintiff, whose title is withheld in a legal grievance, alleged that former teacher Raymond Lawrence Ruiz groomed her for so long as two years earlier than an encounter the place he took her to a campus restroom, pulled her off her wheelchair, and raped her. She is referred to solely as Jane Doe in her lawsuit.
“Think about this younger girl being wheeled right into a restroom, knocked off, can’t do something, and being so helpless,” mentioned plaintiff legal professional Mark Boskovich. “The assault itself is so egregious. It makes for a tragic story.”
Ruiz, a 71-year-old San Jose resident, was an teacher on the Santa Clara-based faculty’s defunct Program for College students With Developmental Disabilities, which was aimed toward educating college students assorted life expertise to assist them dwell independently. In line with the lawsuit and legal costs, Doe is in her mid-to-late 20s and has cerebral palsy and cortical visible impairment, makes use of a wheelchair, and has the intelligence of a 13-year-old.
Ruiz was arrested in July 2020 and has been charged with rape, kidnapping and two different sexual assault counts additionally encompasses an allegation that after the reported rape — mentioned to have occurred between December 2019 and March 2020, when this system was shut down for the COVID-19 pandemic — Ruiz sexually assaulted Doe in a campus shuttle van.
Doe’s lawsuit blames West Valley-Mission Neighborhood School District employees for repeatedly failing to report and reply to suspicious and sexually aggressive habits by Ruiz, together with a declare of inappropriate touching in 2016 that led to a pupil being pulled out of this system.
The swimsuit, filed in September 2020, additionally claims that Ruiz’s spouse, a co-director of this system, sought to cowl up her husband’s actions by gaslighting victims and portraying them as liars to different college students.
“We’re hoping this sends a message not solely to the West Valley-Mission School district however the different districts that run these sorts of applications,” mentioned Boskovich, whose legislation agency Corsiglia, McMahon and Allard focuses on faculty sexual abuse circumstances. “Hopefully this encourages (victims) and oldsters to say one thing, and encourage these faculty districts working these applications to verify they’re doing the correct issues.”
Boskovich added, “They’re such a susceptible inhabitants, you possibly can manipulate them mentally and bodily. My shopper was relegated to a wheelchair and had the psychological capability of a 13-year-old; you possibly can see how a predator can use that towards any individual.”
Ruiz is out of jail custody; his subsequent scheduled court docket date is a trial-setting listening to on Oct. 19. His legal professional and the neighborhood faculty district didn't reply to requests for remark Thursday.
Earlier than the reported rape, the lawsuit states that Ruiz favored Doe with private consideration that included shopping for her meals and ice cream, telephone chargers, garments and a bracelet, and texted her “private messages unrelated to high school and known as her throughout non-school hours.”
Doe additionally alleges that Ruiz “insisted” on bodily serving to her out and in of her wheelchair although she didn't need assistance, and that there have been “cases when Raymond Ruiz transported plaintiff alone to the restroom,” for which his spouse admonished him, in accordance with the swimsuit.
After Ruiz’s arrest two years in the past, the district mentioned it swiftly eliminated Ruiz, who had been a contract worker with the college beginning in 2015.
Boskovich mentioned that ought to have occurred sooner, when suspicions about Ruiz began surfacing inside a yr of his rent. He mentioned the settlement indicators to him that the district acknowledged the “overwhelming” proof of what occurred to Doe.
“Give them credit score for stepping up and doing the correct factor,” he mentioned.
Boskovich added that he hopes the settlement will present Doe and her household with wanted safety and stability.
“Jane Doe has a number of wants and I’m hoping this settlement will give her what she must get mental-health therapy and simply to make her life simpler, and might convey some peace to her life,” he mentioned. “She’s nonetheless afraid from what occurred.”
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