Sacramento school district was aware of serial abuse by substitute teacher, students allege
Nine former Sacramento City Unified School District students are suing the district for allegedly allowing a sexually abusive substitute teacher to continue working in the district despite receiving dozens of documented complaints of misconduct from students, faculty and parents over two decades.
The plaintiffs, whose attorneys say are just several of hundreds of his victims, allege that former substitute teacher Andrew Rivas groped them and/or made sexually inappropriate comments to them while they were students. The anonymous plaintiffs include two now-adult men and seven women who ranged from 10 to 17 years-old at the time of the alleged abuse.
“As a substitute teacher for more than two decades, Andrew Rivas waged a prolonged campaign of abuse against students of all ages in the Sacramento City Unified School District,” said the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Adam Slater. “The school system’s primary responsibility is to provide a safe and secure environment for students to learn in, but the abuse and mistreatment suffered by our clients tells a horrifyingly different story.”
The abuse detailed in the complaint allegedly took place across five Sacramento City Unified schools: Elder Creek Elementary, Rosa Parks Middle, Miwok Middle School, (formerly known as Sutter Middle), Luther Burbank High, and Arthur A. Benjamin Health Professions High.
Rivas was employed by the district from 2000 to Nov. 2022, when Sacramento City Unified fired him and reported the alleged misconduct to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. His teaching credential was revoked in July 2024, according to the agency’s online credential lookup tool.
When complaints about Rivas were made public in 2022, Sacramento City Unified acknowledged that a review of his personnel file showed “prior incidents of concern” which led the district to “examine its practices, identify lapses, and work to institute corrective actions.”
Sacramento City Unified spokesperson Al Goldberg said that since 2022, the district has “has taken a number of steps to improve its complaint/disciplinary process with trainings to site and central office administrators, working to ensure role clarity and responsibilities and implementing the use of a tracking system.” He did not provide comment on the lawsuit, citing district policy to not comment on pending litigation.
Rivas has not responded to a request for comment. As of Friday, no criminal charges have been filed against Rivas, according to the Sacramento Superior Court.
Past complaints about Rivas
According to the complaint, Rivas was arrested at Elder Creek Elementary in 2003 following accusations that he fondled and made inappropriate comments toward a female student. No action was taken against Rivas by the district.
Reports of poor behavior, from student complaints about inappropriate conduct to faculty complaints about unprofessional practices, continued until his dismissal in 2022. One male student reported that Rivas told him to “cut his penis off with scissors” when he asked to be excused to the restroom.
Between 2015 and 2017, three students in the district reported Rivas to their respective counselors and disclosed that he was repeatedly touching and making harassing comments to them. These claims were never elevated.
“The District took no action against Rivas for approximately two decades leaving him to prey upon and victimize hundreds of young children despite dozens of reported incidents and complaints regarding Rivas’ blatant misconduct,” the complaint reads.
This lawsuit is the latest in several recent local cases that allege school employees have not done their due diligence as mandated reporters of suspected child abuse. A San Juan Unified School District parent is suing the district and several administrators for allegedly being aware of the existence of child sexual abuse material featuring a student and not taking the necessary action to stop it.
A Sacramento jury recently found Folsom Cordova Unified School District responsible for a disabled student’s repeated experience of child-on-child sexual abuse on a school bus. Two bus drivers, who are considered mandated reporters under California law, allegedly witnessed the abuse and did not report the abuse to the authorities. The district has been ordered to pay the family $1.7 million in damages.
