Re: He says he was raped by a Marin tennis coach - and is suing the school district for failing to act

[Pelosi Legacy]

On 01 Oct 2021, Gawd Almighty <no....@all.right.now> posted some
news:fLL5J.60526$2B4....@fx04.iad:

> "13% = 6x the crimes!" <repar...@naacp.org> wrote in
> news:sj58bu$tah$3...@news.dns-netz.com:
>
>> Phil Omdahl wrote
>>
>> I had pictures of Bill Clinton and Obama in dresses.
>
> Then he saw a lot of videos of you sucking cock and taking
> it up the ass.
>

His eyes covered by a blindfold, the Marin County teen lay on the cold
Tamalpais High School massage table and allowed his mind to drift. He
tried to imagine he was at Stinson Beach, listening to the crash of waves
in the distance, his mother and father laughing as the family enjoyed a
picnic on the sand.

The image distracted him from the fact that his tennis instructor — the
high school’s revered coach and P.E. teacher — was raping and molesting
him, he said. Over the course of three years, celebrated Tam High tennis
coach Normandie Burgos sexually assaulted the teenager, now a Novato man
in his 30s, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Marin County Superior
Court.

In the complaint, John Doe, as he is identified in the lawsuit, alleges
sexual harassment, molestation, sexual battery and rape at the hands of
Burgos starting in 1999, when he was a 16-year-old sophomore, until he
graduated from high school in 2002. He is also suing Tamalpais Union High
School District for negligence, claiming an employee walked in on Burgos
molesting him and did nothing to stop the alleged abuse.

“I was scared and at no point was I ever used to it,” Doe said in a phone
interview with The Chronicle. The newspaper does not typically name
survivors of sexual assault. “After a long time, that beach became harder
to visualize.”

District Superintendent Tara Taupier said the school system’s legal
counsel is reviewing the lawsuit. She declined to comment on the
complaint.

“There are no current administrators or board members who were in their
position when Mr. Burgos was employed by the district,” she said.

Doe’s allegations are the latest in a decades-long string of abuse claims
against Burgos, who in 2019 was convicted in Contra Costa County on 60
counts of child molestation in Richmond.

Burgos, now 59, is serving 255 years at Mule Creek State Prison in Amador
County. Last year, he lost his criminal appeal. In May, a Marin County
jury awarded $10 million to another abuse survivor who filed a similar
lawsuit against the school district alleging abuse by Burgos at Tam High.

In an interview, Doe said he began chasing tennis balls around Marin
County courts when he was 6.

At 16, he started his sophomore year at the private North Bay Marin School
in his hometown of Mill Valley, which had no tennis program. A friend on
the Tam High tennis team introduced him to Burgos, who said Doe could
practice with the school’s tennis team.

Doe began driving to Tam High during lunch and after school for private
lessons with Burgos, and trained and competed with the school team over
the summer.

“He had a great reputation,” he said of Burgos. “He was the tennis coach
everyone wanted to play for.”

Does said that Burgos told him he had to follow the same “routine” as the
Tam High student athletes, which included physical therapy, according to
the lawsuit.

During one-on-one sessions, Doe said in the interview, Burgos would
stretch and massage his legs on the tennis court, over time touching
higher on his thigh. The sessions soon moved inside the boys’ locker room,
Doe said.

With no one else around, Burgos instructed the teen to lie down on the
fold-out massage table inside the locker room and used an eye mask to
cover his eyes. It was about six to eight months after he started training
at Tam High, Doe estimated. During that first session, Burgos groped the
boy’s buttocks, according to the lawsuit.

“I thought it was something normal,” Doe recalled. “He didn’t want us to
look at his eyes and he wanted us to feel like he was doing it in secret.”

Soon, during these sessions, Burgos began to massage the boy’s groin, he
alleged. During one episode, according to the lawsuit, the boy began to
cry and Burgos told him: “I don’t know — is this something you’re really
going to be able to handle? Being on the Tam High team?”

Outside the locker room doors, he could hear voices of kids playing on the
nearby basketball courts.

“I knew something was wrong and I couldn’t speak up against it,” Doe told
The Chronicle. “You don’t feel like you’re being abused. You think it’s a
normal thing people go through. … He manipulates you in a way to make you
feel comfortable.”

At least twice, Burgos raped the boy in the high school locker room,
according to the lawsuit.

One of the alleged rapes occurred right before an important match. Burgos
asked the boy: “Do you really want to play against them? Are you ready for
that?” according to the lawsuit.

The boy asked Burgos to stop, the complaint states, but instead the coach
responded: “Are you sure you want to sacrifice this?”

During another episode of the alleged abuse, Doe was lying shirtless and
blindfolded on the massage table, his shorts pulled up to expose his
genitals. While Burgos groped his groin, an adult walked in, according to
the lawsuit.

“Oh, you guys look busy, Norm!” the adult male said, according to the
lawsuit, and left the locker room without intervening.

In California, school employees are mandated reporters, required by law to
alert the police or child protective services to any reasonable suspicion
of abuse or neglect.

Doe and his attorneys said they believe the man was a school district
employee based on the time of day and the man’s access to the boys’ locker
room, according to the suit.

“Burgos was a prolific sexual predator, yet the District utterly failed in
its duty to protect our client from horrific abuse — even after a District
employee walked in on Burgos abusing our client,” said Paul Llewellyn,
Doe’s attorney. “Sadly, there are likely many other victims who have not
yet come forward. How many more lawsuits will it take before the District
finally accepts responsibility for its failings?”

The lawsuit alleges that Burgos administered hundreds of “fat tests” on
Tam High students, requiring them to stand naked before him and
inappropriately touching students’ genitals. Burgos also routinely spied
on Doe in the locker room, staring at him through a window in his office,
according to the lawsuit.

Doe alleges that teachers and administrators had suspicions of sexual
misconduct by the coach but did nothing. These suspicions are not detailed
in the lawsuit.

The abuse stopped, according to the complaint, when Doe graduated high
school and left for college in 2002. But other boys would accuse Burgos of
sexually assaulting them as well.

In 2006 and 2010, Burgos faced trials in Marin County on charges that he
sexually abused tennis students while coaching at Tam High. He was accused
of touching teens during workouts and massages; one student testified that
Burgos used a blindfold during the abuse. Parents loudly supported him
during the trials, proclaiming his innocence and even raising money for
his defense. Both trials ended in hung juries.

The school district fired Burgos, but he continued coaching tennis
privately in Richmond, where he lived. In 2014, two boys in the East Bay
came forward with allegations of abuse and Contra Costa County prosecutors
charged Burgos with dozens of child molestation counts there.

According to the Bay Area News Group, two boys he had coached told police
that Burgos would threaten to take back gear or to rescind special
treatment to coerce them into the sexual abuse. Eventually, one of the
boys wore a wire and recorded Burgos incriminating himself. A jury
convicted him in 2019.

In May 2022, a Marin County jury awarded $10 million to Alex Harrison, a
former Tam High tennis player who sued the school district over abuse at
the hands of Burgos from 2000 to 2004. The district is appealing the
verdict.

In November, a 38-year-old Santa Clara County resident filed a lawsuit
against Burgos and the school district alleging he was sexually abused
during the 1999-2000 school year while a Tam High student. The case is
ongoing.

For this John Doe, the effects of the alleged assaults continue to haunt
him.

Since graduating high school, he said, he has struggled with suicidal
thoughts and anxiety. He has been in therapy and taken antidepressants to
deal with the trauma, he said, but watched several parts of his life
stall.

He failed to start a career until he was in his 30s. While in graduate
school, he said, he married a woman and suffered a massive panic attack,
the next day. He had difficulty trusting anyone, including his new wife,
and the marriage soon ended.

“When I was raped, it’s something that steals who you are. It makes
everything uncertain,” he said. “I wanted to start this lawsuit because
they took so much away from who I was.”

Now, more than two decades after the alleged abuse, Doe is remarried and
works in the tech industry.

He said he no longer plays tennis.

“I walk on a court and it triggers thoughts about being raped and abused,”
he said. “It’s sad. It was my favorite game growing up.”

Matthias Gafni is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email:
matthia...@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mgafni

<https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/tam-high-abuse-lawsuit-
17760727.php>