Victims Contacted El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office Reporting Berryessa School Teacher’s Past Sexual Abuse
ROBERT SALONGA, Bay Area News Group
(PLACERVILLE, CALIFORNIA) July 15, 2022 — New filing claims Ronald Gardner abused plaintiff at Sierramont Middle School in the late 1990s; Gardner is being prosecuted on abuse allegations from two other students from the early 2000s
SAN JOSE — A student who attended Sierramont Middle School in the late 1990s is suing the Berryessa Union School District, claiming no one intervened when he was sexually exploited by an ex-teacher who is currently being prosecuted on allegations he sexually abused two other former students.
The lawsuit filed this week alleges that the plaintiff — listed as John Doe — was the victim of grooming by Ronald Gardner, a former teacher who taught science and also coached the track team and chess club at the school before stepping down about […]
April 2021 arrest, which was followed by two charges of oral copulation with a minor and two charges of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor. Those counts involve two reported victims who between 2000 and 2003 were either taught or coached by Gardner.
In the lawsuit, Doe describes behaviors similar to the allegations that fuel the current criminal charges. That includes spending time with male students before and after school, driving them to and from school, and making inappropriate comments and contact with them.
But Doe — who states that he was an eighth grader in the 1997-1998 school year when he was abused — also provides an explosive anecdote about Gardner, claiming that the teacher was nearly caught while engaging in a sex act with him. In the filing, he describes how a janitor was about to enter Gardner’s classroom after school, and that Gardner “scrambled to pull up his pants” before the janitor walked in.[…]
That earlier report states that the school principal at the time told investigators that Gardner had been reprimanded in the past, and described a lot of close contact between Gardner and a group of male students. But no charges resulted, and Gardner resigned from the school soon after.
Gardner returned to police suspicion in February 2021 when one of the reported victims contacted the El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office to report his past abuse, and the case was transferred to the San Jose Police Department. During that investigation, detectives learned that another man suffered similar alleged abuse around the same time as the first reported victim.[…]