Gordon Dillow
Orange County Register
August 3, 2003
The grim irony in the case of former elementary school teacher and convicted child molester Jason Abhyankar is this: If school district officials hadn't been so afraid of being sued, they probably wouldn't have gotten sued.
But now, even after paying a record-setting $6.8 million settlement, it's still not at all clear that officials in the Ocean View School District have really learned anything from their mistakes.
The case began about four years ago, when Abhyankar, now 28, was a fourth-grade teacher at Village View Elementary School in Huntington Beach. As a teacher he was often seen doing things he shouldn't do: spending time in his classroom with certain young boys with the door locked, driving them around in his car, and so on.
Nobody caught him doing anything overtly criminal, but it was pretty suspicious, and creepy; parents were complaining. School officials repeatedly warned Abhyankar to knock it off, and even went as far as assigning a teacher's aide to keep an eye on him. Finally they decided to give him the heave-ho by not renewing his contract.
So far, so good. But Abhyankar, a smooth-talking character, didn't go easily. He threatened to sue the school district for defamation if he wasn't given a letter of recommendation so he could land another teaching job.
Of course, the response to the threat should have been: "Go ahead, sue us. Oh, and don't let the doorknob hit you in the behind on the way out."
But no. In her eagerness to rid herself of this creep without any annoying litigation, Village View then-Principal Kristi Hickman sat down and wrote a recommendation letter that made Abhyankar sound like Mother Teresa.
It was a "pleasure" to recommend Mr. Abhyankar, Hickman wrote, adding that his "sense of humor and leadership skills endear him to staff, parents and students."
And so on. There wasn't one negative word about the guy, or any mention of the many suspicions and complaints about him.
And even when Abhyankar was applying for a teaching gig at Portola Hills Elementary School in Trabuco Canyon, and the principal there called Hickman to ask about him, Hickman still didn't warn her of this guy or suggest that he was anything but a first-rate teacher.
Well, you know what happened. Abhyankar got the Portola Hills teaching job and started molesting young boys - until one of them told his mom about it. Abhyankar was arrested and charged with molesting boys at Portola Hills and earlier at Village View.
Meanwhile, parents of the molested boys filed civil lawsuits against the Ocean View School District for allowing Abhyankar to continue teaching and then palming him off on another school.
Unfortunately, even after the criminal charges against Abhyankar were filed, Principal Hickman and others from the Ocean View School District didn't seem eager to see justice done.
Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy, the prosecutor in the case, angrily told me at the time that Hickman and others from the school district appeared to be going out of their way not to help in the criminal case against Abhyankar. The obvious inference was that they feared a conviction in the criminal case would hurt them in the civil case brought by the parents.
Nevertheless, in February 2002, a jury convicted Abhyankar of multiple counts of child molestation; afterward jurors called it a "slam-dunk" case. A judge hammered Abhyankar with a 24-year prison sentence.
And last week, in the biggest settlement ever in a sexual-molestation lawsuit against a California school district, Ocean View School District - or its insurance company - agreed to pay a total of $6.8 million to six boys in an out-of-court deal.
But here's the problem. Under the terms of the settlement, neither the school district nor the school officials involved are admitting that they did anything wrong!
In fact, they've refused to make any comment at all about the settlement, the terms of which also prohibit the parents of the abused boys from commenting. And Principal Hickman continues to be a principal - albeit at another school in the district.
None of this sits well with some Village View Elementary parents who were appalled that this had happened at their school.
"It feels like everybody just kind of goes on their merry way," says Bev Airhart, a former parent volunteer at the school. "There's no apology, no oops we made a mistake, no sense of responsibility."
Sure, you could argue that money talks, that a $6.8 million settlement is an apology in its cash form. Or at least you could look at it that way if you're a lawyer.
But in the real world, that doesn't quite cut it. If school district officials really want to start putting this debacle behind them, they should sit down and write an open letter to every parent in Orange County whose kids could have wound up having this guy as a teacher.
And I even have a suggested format. The letter should begin with the words, "We're sorry."
And it should end with, "We promise it will never happen again."
