There will be no more hiding behind arbitrary time limits, also known as statutes of limitations, for predators who commit sex abuse crimes in California. The Governor signed SB 813, which amends the penal code so that the following sex abuse crimes have no time limits to prosecute:
Merced County Superior Court Judge David Moranda sentenced Gary Bettencourt, former Pacheco High School drama and English teacher, to eight years and four months in prison on Friday, September 23, 2016 (Merced County criminal case number: 16CR-00639A). Bettencourt last month pleaded no contest to sexually abusing two former students more than 10 years ago and, more recently, to having sexually abused another student in 2015.
The Bettencourt case led police to also charge Dusty Norris, a former Los Banos high school teacher turned police officer with similar crimes. Norris is charged with sexually abusing one of Bettencourt’s victims.
Both Bettencourt and Norris along with the Los Banos Unified School District are named in a civil lawsuit filed by the San Jose law firm of Cerri, Boskovich & Allard. According to attorney Robert Allard, “Bettencourt has now been held criminally responsible for what he did to these young girls. It’s now time for the school district to be held accountable for allowing Bettencourt to harm these young women in the worst of ways”.
An Orange County, California jury awarded former Olympic swimming hopeful and USA Swimming National Team member Dagny Knutson $617,810 for the financial and emotional harm caused by her former attorney, Richard Foster. Knutson trusted Foster with her swimming career when she retained him in late 2010, but the aquatics insider instead defrauded Knutson.
The Knutson legal team featured attorneys Robert Allard, Jonathan Little, Mark Boskovich and Laura Liccardo.
“Dagny was used, abused, manipulated and betrayed by a powerful group of aquatic insiders,” said Allard. “This is full vindication for her. After what she has been through and what she has lost, she deserves it.”
Despite recent stories of USA Swimming coaching sex abuse, swimming is one of the most popular Olympic sports, and the success of famous athletes such as Michael Phelps and Missy Franklin inspires children across the nation to start swim lessons with USA Swimming Clubs, YMCA programs, or municipal summer recreation pools. All too frequently, however, coaches abuse their close relationships with young athletes, and take sexual advantage of them. The problem of coaching sex abuse is worsened when the supervising organization, rather than taking steps to protect the victim and any other children under its care, tries to preserve its reputation by covering up the actions of the coach turned predator.
One of the biggest coaching sex abuse scandals in youth athletics in recent years continues to involve USA Swimming. So far, over a hundred coaches working for USA Swimming’s member clubs have been permanently banned from the sport for molesting, groping, and secretly filming the young athletes under their care.
The human brain is a complex organ. It has nearly full control over the functioning of both the body and the mind. However, a traumatic event can deeply change the way a victim’s brain processes and interprets information. Any profoundly horrifying or life-threatening occurrence – a natural disaster, a battle, or a physical or sexual assault – can scar the mind and alter the operation and structure of the victim’s brain.
Post-traumatic stress disorder, commonly known as PTSD, is a grave psychological condition triggered by a traumatic or horrifying event in a person’s life, such as childhood sexual abuse. The person’s life may have been placed in mortal danger, or they may have sustained grievous injury-or there may have been the imminent threat of grievous injury. PTSD is a consequence of the feelings of powerlessness, terror, or latent phobias which often plague survivors of traumatic experiences. While PTSD has traditionally been associated with war veterans, similar symptoms have been documented in victims of accidents, natural disasters, or physical or sexual assault.
Moments of intense fear or horror create powerful echoes within a person’s psyche. It’s natural for that person to experience a broad spectrum of emotional turmoil following the event; awe, anxiety, anger, terror-even shame and guilt. In some cases, these emotions may fade with time. Frequently, however, these emotions escalate, taking over the individual’s life and making it difficult to work or have normal relationships. A person who has had PTSD symptoms for longer than a month and is experiencing difficulty with their lifestyle and functionality needs immediate help.
This case started with a single victim. In January 2012, authorities arrested Craig Chandler on suspicion of molesting a young child at O.B. Whaley Elementary School, where he had worked as a teacher for nine years. As the investigation proceeded, it became clear that he had molested five girls going back to 2010. The jury sentenced Chandler to 75 years in prison. Moreover, O.B. Whaley’s principal, Lyn Vijayendran, who was told of Chandler’s inappropriate behavior but failed to notify police or Child Protective Services, was sentenced to six months in jail.
Attorney Robert Allard of Cerri, Boskovich & Allard led the litigation team against the Evergreen Elementary School District. By preparing an airtight case against the District, Mr. Allard’s team persuaded the District to pay $15 million to the victims for the lifelong harm they are to endure. At the same time, the settlement prevented the poor victims from having to relive their trauma in a courtroom. Allard knew that the Evergreen School District was clearly at fault—that the principal of O.B. Whaley had been previously made aware of Chandler’s inappropriate behavior with students, and had even been observed engaging in inappropriate acts by other teachers, yet the principal had taken no action. Hence the extraordinarily large amount of the settlement.
It’s an established fact in psychology and neuroscience that the earliest years of a child’s life are the most formative. The experiences a child has in the first years of life impacts the kind of adult you become. Optimally, an abundance of learning opportunities and thorough parental involvement become a recipe for a well-balanced and contented adulthood. In the worst-case scenario, 
however, an unhappy childhood—full of stress, traumatic experiences, parental neglect, and other unpleasantness—can have “lasting negative outcomes” on a person’s life.
At the annual Society for Neuroscience Conference in 2012, Jamie Hanson, a researcher at the University of Wisconsin, presented some of his insights into the development of the brain and behavior of children who’d experienced stress, such as child sex abuse, in their formative years.
Concerns about teacher-student texting are under debate in Clark County, Nevada. This after a recent spate of sexual misconduct and molestation cases.
The Las Vegas Sun examined ten years of sexual misconduct cases by county educators (2005 to 2015). They discovered that half the cases involved private electronic communication between the teacher and the victim. Furthermore, from 2010 to 2015, 80% of sexual misconduct cases involved some form of private electronic communication. This included texting, email, and so forth. As a result, predatory teachers have been using text and email to groom their victims.
A Children’s Advocacy Center, or CAC, is an organization that focuses on helping victimized children sensitively yet efficiently. They do so without forcing children to relive their horrible experience by repeating their stories numerous times. CACs bring together specialists from many different disciplines: law enforcement officials, child protective services, lawyers, psychiatrists, physicians, and child advocacy groups. These individuals jointly interview abused children and decide, as a single unit, the best course to take with the investigation of the crime, the treatment of the children’s psychological trauma, and the proper conduct of legal proceedings.
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