The state-financed California School for the Deaf will pay $14 million to a former student who suffered years of sexual abuse at the hands of a dorm attendant, whose history of complaints the boarding school allegedly ignored.
As part of a settlement reached Monday, the Fremont-based institution agreed to pay the victim, identified only as John Doe, for three years of sexual abuse he suffered from Ricardo Rose until he left the school in 2011. The victim reported the abuse in 2018 when he became an adult, and Rose was subsequently convicted of a felony.
The school, founded 165 years ago in San Francisco, is a state-run boarding school for the deaf, where nearly all employees, students and staff are deaf or hard of hearing.
Rose was a deaf school employee working at the dormitory where boys slept for more than three decades.
“We learned that for 30 years this CSD employee was hurting students, and intimidating and threatening CSD employees,” said attorney David Ring, who represented the victim. “Despite repeated red flags, the school kept him employed and allowed him to be alone with vulnerable, deaf students.”
School officials did not respond to a request for comment.
The victim was 10 years old and in the fourth grade at the time the abuse began in 2009. Rose was 47 at the time, according to the lawsuit. The repeated rapes lasted for two and a half years and did not stop until John Doe left the school, the suit claims.
During the abuse, Rose signed to John Doe that Rose would “bite his [John Doe’s] fingers off” if he told anyone about the abuse, according to the victim’s attorney David Ring and court documents. At times, the boy was restrained and choked and assaulted in his dorm room bed.
In January 2018, at the age of 18, the victim told his parents and went to the police. Rose was arrested by the California Highway Patrol and charged with several felonies related to childhood sexual abuse. In 2022, Rose pleaded no contest to one felony burglary and one misdemeanor of annoying and molesting related to the abuse. As part of his sentence, he was required to register as a sex offender for a decade.
After Doe came forward and police investigated his claims, three other victims who were abused before 2009 were discovered, according to the lawsuit.
Rose was also the subject of repeated complaints of misconduct over his 30 years at the school, including that he was inappropriate with the children he supervised there and that his co-workers were afraid of him, according to the documents filed by the victim’s attorney.
The lawsuit also claims the victim tried to report that Rose sexually abused him to a teacher and that Rose had a gun, but the teacher sent him to the principal, who dismissed the student’s claims.
In defending the case, lawyers for the school said that during an investigation by the California Highway Patrol the victim never indicated he told an adult about the sexual abuse, and the school did not know of Rose’s behavior before the CHP probe.
“Because of the perpetrator’s threats, John Doe lived silently with the abuse for years until he gained the courage to come forward and report it in 2018,” said Natalie Weatherford, who litigated the case with Ring. “This settlement represents the profound, lifelong impact that childhood sexual abuse has on its victims, and provides John Doe with the help he needs to get back what this school took from him.”
