The Victor Valley Union High School District has agreed to pay $12.5 million to eight former students who alleged they were sexually abused more than 20 years ago by a former middle school guidance counselor.
In five lawsuits filed in San Bernardino Superior Court in August and September 2022, the alleged victims claimed Eric Lynn Brown sexually abused and molested them in his office at Victor Valley Junior High School and off campus from 1991 to 2002. School officials, the suits alleged, were aware of the misconduct and failed to report it, enabling Brown to sexually abuse several children for more than a decade.
Brown, now 62, worked as a coach and guidance counselor at the school from 1991 until July 2002, a district official said.
Attorney Morgan Stewart, a partner at the Irvine law firm Manly Stewart & Finaldi and one of the attorneys representing plaintiffs in the case, said his clients will receive an average of $1.5 million each from the settlement.
“The amount of this settlement highlights the abject failure of the school administration and the district to protect children from this depraved serial predator. Victor Valley Unified School District did everything wrong and ignored Brown’s repeated misconduct. For many years, they failed to report his abuse of children,” said a statement from attorney Cristina Nolan, who also represented the former students, on Wednesday, Oct. 22.
Brown was arrested in 2002 and subsequently convicted of committing lewd and lascivious acts with victims under 14 years old, providing harmful matter to minors to seduce, lewd and lascivious acts with a victim under 14 to 15 years old and with an age difference of 10-plus years, and penetration with a foreign object with a victim under 18 years old, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Brown was sentenced in 2005 to 102 years in prison, according to the Victorville Daily Press. He is serving his sentence at the California Institution for Men in Chino. His next parole eligibility hearing is tentatively scheduled for October 2027. He was denied parole during a prior hearing in October 2022, according to the CDCR.
The lawsuits allege that former Victor Valley Union High School District Superintendent Gregory Lundeen and former Victor Valley Junior High School Assistant Principal Kile Nightingale were aware of complaints of sexual misconduct against Brown and failed to report it.
“Victor Valley Union High School District employees and administrators chose to move Brown within the school district upon an investigation and report of sexual misconduct, effectively ‘passing the trash’ within the district, in a concerted effort to hide Brown’s sexual abusive crimes against minors,” according to the lawsuits.
School district officials declined to comment on the settlement on Thursday, Oct. 23.
Built in 1937, Victor Valley Junior High served as a combined junior high and high school until the construction of Victor Valley High School in the early 1950s. It then operated as a middle school until 2008, when it then became Lakeview Leadership Academy, a grade 7-12 preparatory school, which operated until 2014 before relocating to another area of the city.
The campus then became a magnet for trespassers. In 2018, a fire destroyed the gymnasium and, in 2020, the district demolished all of the structures, Reilly said.
