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	State Supreme Court Throws out Vista Sex Abuse Lawsuit By Scott Marshall North County Times August 21, 2007 http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/08/21/news/top_stories/1_04_378_20_07.txt North County — A former Vista High School student cannot sue the Vista Unified School District in connection with allegations that her English teacher sexually abused her when she was a teenage student almost 30 years ago, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday. The state's highest court split 6-1 in favor of ruling that a change to state law in 2002 regarding childhood sexual abuse lawsuits did not extend the time within which people must file a claim with a public agency like a school district, county or city. State law generally requires that a claim be filed with and rejected by a public agency before that agency can be sued. Representatives of school districts and other public agencies have said in court documents and interviews that they feared public entities could be exposed to childhood sexual abuse lawsuits similar to those that plague the Roman Catholic church today if the Supreme Court decided the law extended the time in which to file claims. Jack Sleeth, an attorney for the Vista school district, said Monday that he was "very pleased" that the Supreme Court preserved the legal protections for public agencies and that the same rules that always have applied to children who may want to sue will continue to apply. "It establishes that the law is settled and we're not going to have 30-year-old cases," Sleeth said. Manuel Corrales, the attorney for the former Vista High School student who is now a 45-year-old mother, could not be reached Monday for comment on the case. A San Diego attorney who represents some victims in sexual abuse lawsuits against the Catholic diocese and who filed a "friend of the court" brief in the case against the Vista Unified School District, said Monday's ruling will have a broad effect. "There are a lot of governmental entities that are going to escape responsibility for what was done," attorney Irwin Zalkin said. Responding to an inquiry about Monday's ruling, an official with the group Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, a nationwide support group for victims of clergy abuse, issued a statement saying statutes of limitations hurt all victims of sexual abuse, regardless of whether the alleged perpetrator is a clergyman. "AllÝsexual abuse is alike in the amount of time it takes the survivor to find the strength to report the harm," Barbara Dorris, the national outreach director for the survivors' network, wrote in the statement. While some have drawn parallels between the sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church and the occurrence of teacher sexual abuse of students, available statistics for the two situations are not comparable, according to an expert who authored a 2004 report for the U.S. Department of Education on sexual misconduct by teachers. The lawsuit against the Vista school district alleged that former teacher Jeffrey Paul Jones, 59, engaged in sex acts with a girl 200 times in an 18-month period that began in 1978, when she was 15 and Jones was 30. The lawsuit also alleged school district officials knew or should have known about the alleged misconduct and failed to prevent it. The woman did not report the alleged sexual misconduct until 2001, when her daughter was in high school. An attorney for the district, Dan Shinoff, said earlier this year that he had not found any evidence to indicate that any district officials knew about what was happening with Jones and his student. Jones' attorney, Jonathan Vanderpool, has said that Jones does not dispute having a relationship with the woman when she was his student, but Vanderpool said some of her allegations are "overstated" and that he would "take issue" with allegations that the relationship caused "everything that has befallen her personally and otherwise." A Superior Court judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2003 because the woman had not filed a claim with the district sometime in 1980, as required by law. A state appeals court based in San Diego overturned that decision, but the state Supreme Court ruled Monday that the appeals court was incorrect. The woman's case against Jones could proceed, but that may be in dispute in the Superior Court. Vanderpool said earlier this year that the woman accepted a judgment against her in the lawsuit so she could appeal the issue of whether she could sue the district. Vanderpool said then that if the woman lost on appeal, he would argue in the Superior Court that the case against Jones cannot be reinstated because a judgment in the case already exists. Jones also faced criminal charges in 2002 based on the woman's allegations, but prosecutors dismissed the charges in July 2003 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an unrelated case that the California law that allowed for criminal charges was unconstitutional. That law let prosecutors bypass the normal statute of limitations in criminal cases for some sex crimes. Jones officially left the Vista school district in the summer of 2003. The state Commission on Teacher Credentialing later revoked his teaching credential. — Contact staff writer Scott Marshall at (760) 631-6623 or smarshall@nctimes.com.
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