40 years later, five Capital Christian students say teacher tied them up, abused them

Even 40 years later, the Sorgea brothers have trouble talking about what they say happened to them at Sacramento’s Capital Christian School.

“People need to be held accountable,” Darren Sorgea said in a recent interview, holding back the emotion welling up inside as his older brother, Scott, sat next to him. “I’m tired of just wondering why, like, who took my manhood from me?

“Well, I know who did that. And so it’s about me standing up and taking my manhood back.”

The story the two brothers tell — in an interview with The Sacramento Bee and in a lawsuit filed in Sacramento Superior Court on April 19 — is disturbing, and involves one of the most influential private schools in the region, as well as allegations of a cover-up.

It involves a teacher who the brothers say groomed them with favors and cash and gifts, and who worked from 1980 through 1983 as a football coach and adviser to the yearbook and school newspaper staff.

His name is Dave Arnold, who the lawsuit says would invite the boys over to his apartment individually to help him grade papers, then offer them cash to play a “game” in which he tied them up, blindfolded them and told them to try to escape while he went to the store, the suit says.

“During these abusive incidents, Arnold was not actually leaving the apartment to go to the store,” the lawsuit says. “On information and belief, Arnold would watch and photograph Scott struggling to escape for Arnold’s own sexual gratification. On information and belief, Arnold also masturbated as he watched Scott struggle to escape.

“Eventually, Arnold escalated his abuse by incorporating additional elements, claiming he was toughening Scott up. Arnold began handcuffing Scott to a chair before blindfolding him. Next, Arnold would turn the television up to its highest volume. This element allowed him to watch and photograph Scott without Scott knowing Arnold was still in the apartment.”

Arnold, now 73 and an associate professor at Indiana Wesleyan University’s online school for adult and professional learners, could not be reached for comment.

He did not respond to queries and a copy of the lawsuit sent to his university email address or three others. Two phone listings for him in Oklahoma City did not work, and there was no reply to a message left on his Facebook page.

Tod Dalberg, vice president for external affairs at the school, confirmed “that Arnold is currently employed” by the university and had worked there since 2003.

“Due to university policy I am unable to share any additional information on Dr. Arnold’s beyond his employment dates at Indiana Wesleyan University,” Dalberg wrote in an email.

Capital Christian leader, son of founder, responds

Capital Christian Center Pastor Rick Cole said he became “nauseous” reading the lawsuit, which accuses his deceased father, Glen Cole, the driving force who built Capital Christian Center, of covering up reports of the alleged abuse.

“It’s so difficult to find words for something like this that you hear about like this,” Cole said. “I didn’t have any knowledge of this until you sent it to me.

“I’m certainly heartbroken to learn of the reports of these five men. I’m sad about what they describe. Really, beyond that, it’s difficult for me to comment because it becomes a legal matter, and I need to allow that legal process to take its course. So, to hear something that happened in the early 1980s, it’s just deeply troubling, and I really don’t have any words.”

Cole, who followed his father as pastor at Capital Christian in 1995, said he did not know Arnold and had never heard of him before the suit was filed. He added that the school makes student safety a priority.

“We take seriously our responsibility,” he said. “We have a lot of measures in place in these days that are in to protect our students, and that’s a high priority for us, it’s a top-of-the-chart, top-of-the-page priority that we care for every student and every family that we’re in a relationship with.”

The lawsuit, which seeks damages for negligence, sexual harassment and sexual battery from the school and Arnold, was filed under the auspices of California’s Child Victims Act, a measure passed as Assembly Bill 218 that became law in 2019 and opened a three-year window for victims of childhood sexual abuse to sue.

The measure has been used in actions against the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts of America and other entities across the state, and gives victims until Dec. 31 to file a lawsuit. Costa Mesa attorney Brian Williams of Greenberg Gross LLP and Los Angeles attorney Mike Reck of Jeff Anderson & Associates filed the 30-page lawsuit, and both have extensive experience with the Child Victims Act.

David “Scott” Sorgea, his brother Darren and three other former Capital Christian students — Dan Schumacher, Robbe Taylor and Kevin Williams — are the plaintiffs in the suit, which alleges a “decades-long campaign to cover up the systemic sexual abuse of minors that permeated the CCS campus throughout the 1980s.”

At the time, Capital Christian was preparing to move from its Sacramento base to a sprawling plot of land off Highway 50 and Bradshaw Road, where Pastor Glen Cole built one of the largest Assemblies of God congregations in the country, with 5,000 people coming weekly to hear his sermons.

And, at the time, Cole was adamant that nothing could interfere with his plans, the lawsuit claims.

“Nobody is going to bring down my school,” the lawsuit quotes Cole as saying in 1983 when he allegedly learned of the abuse allegations. “Not Arnold, not those boys, not anyone.”

Another school official knew of the allegations

That statement allegedly came after then-Vice Principal Susan Catlett told Cole of the allegations, which she learned about after Robbe Taylor reported to her in the winter of the 1982-83 school year that Arnold had brought him to his apartment to grade papers, tied him up, blindfolded him and pulled down his pants as part of a “game,” the lawsuit says.

Taylor feared he was going to be raped and begged Arnold to untie him, then escaped by running into Arnold’s bedroom and jumping from the apartment’s second-floor window, the lawsuit says.

“Vice Principal Catlett told Robbe that (Capital Christian) was looking into other complaints about Arnold,” the lawsuit says. “She told Robbe not to mention the abuse to anyone and that she would ‘handle’ Arnold. Despite Vice Principal Catlett’s promises, nothing was done.”

Catlett, who had been a Sacramento County sheriff’s detective before working at the school, died in 2016. Pastor Glen Cole died in 2012.

The lawsuit contends that Cole and others ignored “countless red flags” that should have warned them about Arnold, including the attention the teacher allegedly paid to Scott Sorgea starting at the beginning of his junior year.

“He would buy me things, lunches, and then he would take me to baseball games, basketball games, just grooming, things that would be not typical for a teacher to do for a student,” Scott Sorgea told The Bee in an interview along with his brother.

That progressed into grading papers in Arnold’s classroom, Sorgea said, and later led to Arnold having him come to his Marconi Avenue apartment, where Arnold paid him $40 for two or three hours of work grading papers while Arnold strolled around in a shirt and underwear.

Eventually, Arnold introduced the “game,” Sorgea said, which involved tying him up with Ace bandages and blindfolding him.

“I remember him saying, ‘I’m going to tie you up, and if you can get out of it here’s 40 more dollars,’” Sorgea said. “I’d be able to get out of it in four or five minutes, and I would take the money and put it in my pocket and go, ‘geez, this is nuts.’ You know, it’s 40 years ago and I’m walking away — $60 to $80 in my pocket.

“ I just remember from that point on never worrying about money for the next year and a half, just never worrying about it.”

Suit: Arnold took pictures, had posters of boys

Sorgea said Arnold eventually gave him an old Dodge Demon to drive, and that the “game” progressed to him being tied up tightly or with handcuffs. Arnold would tell Sorgea he was leaving to get food while Sorgea tried to escape his bindings, but that he discovered Arnold was turning up the TV volume to full and was actually staying in the apartment watching and photographing Sorgea struggle, Sorgea said.

One night, Sorgea said, Arnold was gone and he remembered that Arnold had warned him months before that his apartment bedroom was “off limits.”

“I remember thinking, ‘He’s going to be gone for 20 minutes, what’s the big deal about this bedroom?’

“I remember opening the door and looking at the walls and there were posters everywhere of me, my brother, some of the others who are named in the complaint, victims, and just posters of us. Kevin and I celebrating a championship with our arms around each other, posters of me and a friend playing basketball down in San Diego at Point Loma where we had real tiny shorts on, just athletic types of pictures, candid.

“And I remember thinking, ‘Why in the world does he have pictures of all of us all over his bedroom? This is so strange.’”

Another time, the lawsuit says, Scott Sorgea discovered a photograph in Arnold’s Bible of him gagged, blindfolded and handcuffed to a chair.

“Scott tried to escape the house with the picture, but Arnold snatched the photograph back,” the suit says. “The struggle over the picture developed into a fight between Scott and Arnold.

“After the fight, Arnold apologized and manipulated Scott into returning to the apartment to grade papers, taking advantage of Scott’s vulnerability and misplaced trust.”

There were other photos around the apartment, as well, that Scott Sorgea noticed on his first visit, the lawsuit says.

“As he stepped through the door, Scott immediately noticed several pictures of teenage boys around the apartment,” the suit says. “When Scott asked about the pictures, Arnold explained that the pictures were of boys from Arnold’s youth group at Arden Nazarene Church.”

‘I don’t know if I’m going to make it out of here’

The lawsuit says Arnold explained to Sorgea’s brother, Darren, that he tied up children from that youth group, as well.

One night, Scott Sorgea said, he was at the apartment and his hands were tied tightly behind his back. He was digging his face into the carpet when the bandanna tied around his eyes slipped off slightly.

“I could feel the bandanna coming down off my eyes,” he said. “And I got to the part where about half my eye was showing and I could see, and I turned my head and I saw him masturbating behind his couch.

“I immediately turned my head to the left, and just thought, ‘Oh, wow.’ I think he saw me see him. And I don’t know if I’m going to make it out of here alive tonight. ...

“At that moment, when I saw him, everything rewound. I went, he’s done this to me like 30 or 40 times. And I felt really stupid.”

Sorgea said Arnold untied him that night, then threatened him if he told anyone.

“We got to a point where he said, ‘Oh, OK, so just a reminder. You have four classes with me. I’ll fail you in every class. And the last time we talked, you wanted to be a coach and you wanted to be a teacher. You’re not getting into any school with four F’s. OK. Are we clear?’”

“Yes,” Sorgea says he told him. “We’re clear.”

The other plaintiffs tell similar stories, with the lawsuit saying Arnold tied up Kevin Williams and began gagging him with black dress socks, then put him in a closet or spare bedroom 12 to 15 times.

The suit says Arnold would sneak up behind Darren Sorgea and grab his wrists, then tie him with duct tape and gag him with dress socks. Once, he was left like that in a closet for three hours, the suit says.

Classmates called groomed boys Arnold’s ‘slaves’

While this was going on, the suit says, fellow students were taking notice of the attention Arnold paid the boys.

“By this time, students were now referring to Dan, Robbe, and Darren as Arnold’s ‘slaves’ or ‘pets,’” the suit says. “It was no secret that Arnold was sexually grooming Dan, Robbe, and Darren throughout the 1982-1983 school year.”

There were other warning signs, the attorneys for the men say, including a reference in the yearbook to student “slaves” working for Arnold on the yearbook, and a photograph showing Arnold supposedly in a casket with the caption, “Mr. Arnold in his natural state. Quick ... tie me up.”

But the plaintiffs were not talking to each other about what was happening at the apartment, and the alleged activities only came to light among them during a sleepover among several students, including Scott Sorgea and Dan Schumacher, the lawsuit says.

“Arnold became a topic of conversation amongst the students present,” the suit says. “More specifically, the conversation shifted to Arnold’s behavior and how he liked to tie up his students.”

By then, Dan Schumacher been tied up by Arnold five or six times, the lawsuit says, and once went to the apartment and found a note on the door telling Schumacher that Arnold had arranged for a scavenger hunt for Schumacher to find him, the suit says.

“While exploring the apartment, Dan noticed a large poster of Darren and Dan in Arnold’s bedroom,” the suit says. “Having followed the clues of the scavenger hunt, Dan walked in on Arnold, who was sitting on the floor in his underwear. Arnold was tied up with rope. Arnold requested that Dan untie him.

“He was so disturbed that he told one of his best friends about the experience the next day.”

Claims ‘would ruin’ Capital Christian ahead of big move

After discovering at the sleepover that there were others who had been tied up, Schumacher went to the vice principal to report it, and Catlett went to Cole, the suit says.

But Cole “warned her not to tell law enforcement” because that “would ruin the reputation of the school,” the suit says, adding that “Arnold quietly left his employment” with the school at the end of the 1982-83 school year.

The next year, Capital Christian was making its move from Sacramento to the new campus, and students were being used to pack up the old classrooms, the suit says. A junior high school student, identified as “Student 1” in the suit, was packing up Arnold’s classroom and shaking out books to make sure there were no loose papers inside.

“As she shook one of the books, a packet of approximately 20 strips of photographic negatives dropped out,” the suit says. “Student 1 and her friends held the negatives up to the light, revealing numerous pictures of minor boys lying on the floor or seated in chairs with their wrists tied.

“Student 1 quickly recognized the boys as members of the football team, and specifically recognized Scott.”

Scott Sorgea says he knows about this because many years later the student called him to tell him what she had seen.

‘Why didn’t anybody protect us?’

He also says that in 1999, after his first daughter was born, he thought about Dave Arnold and began to get angry. Finally, he called Susan Catlett, the vice principal he says was like a second mother to him, and when she answered she said, “I’ve been waiting for you to call.”

”And I said, ‘Why did you let Dave Arnold just walk away? Why didn’t anybody protect us? Why didn’t anybody call the police? Why, why, why, why? And she cried and cried and she felt horrible.

“But in that moment she told me everything that happened. She shared everything. ... I learned the truth that day, that it was all covered up.”

Ironically, Sorgea ended up carving out a career at Capital Christian, serving as a teacher, athletic director and ultimately dean of students until he was terminated at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic along with other members of leadership at the school. Sorgea and the others have a separate lawsuit pending against the school for wrongful termination.

He says he returned to the school because of what happened to him as a student.

“I absolutely, desperately wanted to protect other kids from what I experienced,” Sorgea said. “That’s one part of it, and that’s the most important part of it.

“The second part of it is I didn’t let that man ruin my high school experience. My best friends today are guys I went to high school with. I did not let him steal that from me.”

This story was originally published May 4, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "40 years later, five Capital Christian students say teacher tied them up, abused them."