Another family files lawsuit alleging former Sacramento after-school aide molested child
The family of an eighth child is suing the city of Sacramento and Sacramento City Unified School District alleging sexual assault from a former after-school aide.
The lawsuit, filed last week in Sacramento County Superior Court, alleges Joshua Rolando Vasquez sexually assaulted a 7-year-old boy while Vasquez was a staff member at the city’s START program at Mark Twain Elementary School in south Sacramento. The lawsuit names as defendants Vasquez, the city, the school district, and principal Rosario Guillen-Jovel.
The lawsuit claims negligence, childhood sexual assault, and intentional inflection of emotional distress.
The families of two other children sued in 2016, and one girl has received a $12.5 million settlement from the city and school district. The settlement also included changes to the after-school START program, including increased training, updates to the parent handbook and prohibiting staff from being in locked rooms with students.
Vasquez was sentenced in 2016 to 150 years to life in prison for molesting six girls, ages 7 to 13. In 2019, the families of five more children sued.
The city has not yet been served with the complaint, so officials declined to comment on it specifically, city spokesman Tim Swanson said. City Attorney Susana Alcala Wood provided a general comment on the topic, however.
“As I have said before, the crimes committed by Joshua Vasquez were horrific and sickening,” Alcala Wood said in a statement. “He used his position of power to prey on innocent children and commit atrocious acts against them. He was sentenced in 2016 to 150 years to life in prison. The City of Sacramento takes all allegations of sexual abuse very seriously and will continue its work to prevent anything like this from happening again. We have an obligation and duty to keep the children in our educational and recreational programs safe and protected, and this is not something we take lightly.”
The Sacramento City Unified School District said in a statement: “Student safety is the top priority of the Sac City Unified School District. The crimes perpetrated by this former employee were heinous and were appropriately prosecuted by law enforcement. The District takes victims’ allegations seriously and will review the lawsuit.”
In October 2014, a parent made a complaint to Guillen-Jovel that Vasquez had a secret prize box, the lawsuit alleged. In early 2015, another parent told Guillen-Jovel that Vasquez told her daughter that if she kept a secret she could go to his secret office to get a secret prize.
The principal told Vasquez to stop giving the students candy but said he had done nothing inappropriate, the lawsuit said. She then destroyed notes from the conversations, the lawsuit alleged.
As early as October 2014, Vasquez was using his candy reward system to befriend and groom children, and had purchased a hand camera on which he recorded more than 20 childhood sexual assault crimes of at least eight Mark Twain students, the lawsuit said.
Vasquez locked the door and blindfolded students while he played different “games” with them, such as the “numbers game,” the “cleaning a toy in the box game,” and the “whipped cream game,” the lawsuit said.
In fall 2015, the city and district terminated Jeannie Warren as START site director, and the city assigned Vasquez as the fill-in, the lawsuit said. In November 2015, a different student told her parent and the police department that Vasquez had placed his penis in her mouth.
After Vasquez was arrested, the parent who had complained to the principal in early 2015 contacted the principal again, and the principal denied ever having the conversation, the lawsuit alleged.
Roger A. Dreyer, the boy’s attorney, said there could be additional lawsuits by children who were sexually assaulted by Vasquez.
“We know the school district was aware that he was someone who should not be around children and that it would not surprise me if there are other victims due to the length of time he was in the START program and at Mark Twain,” Dreyer said. “The information we’ve uncovered is that despite the principal being made aware of his conduct, suspicion should’ve been raised, nothing was done. More children were exposed to the potential of him abusing them.”
