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Former California School for Deaf-Riverside student ‘passed around’ for sex with boys

March 10, 2026

Five boys sexually exploited a developmentally disabled girl with multiple psychiatric disorders at California School for the Deaf-Riverside, “passing her around” for sex for two years and fueling rumors that led to her persistent bullying, an attorney told jurors this week as trial opened in her lawsuit against the school.

On one occasion, some of the girl’s alleged assailants told her they wanted to rape her because it was “national rape day,” attorney Deborah Chang said during her opening statement Monday, March 9, in Riverside Superior Court. The suit alleges the school and the state Department of Education were negligent in failing to protect and monitor the former student, now 20 and living in a residential care facility due to major depression and suicidal thoughts.

Chang said her client was sexually assaulted at least 21 times in 2022 and 2023, when she was 16 and 17 years old, mostly in restrooms in the school’s gymnasium and Career and Technical Education building. Rumors spread rapidly through the school about the girl’s sexual activity with the boys, and she was continually subjected to physical attacks, verbal bullying and cyberbullying, said Chang, who showed videos and social media posts of the girl being taunted and physically attacked by her peers.

“Every day was torture for her,” Chang told the jury at the historic courthouse in downtown Riverside.

Despite the school’s knowledge of the girl’s vulnerability and complaints from her father about his daughter’s alleged sexual assaults, the school failed to properly address the issue, including not launching a Title IX investigation into the allegations.

Title IX is federal law enacted in 1972 that protects individuals from discrimination based on sex and/or sexual misconduct in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.

The girl’s alleged assailants, Chang said, “knew each other and grew up with each other.” Four of the five boys were on the school’s football team, and two of them were brothers, Chang said. She told the jurors that the girl’s father suspected the school was protecting the boys due to the publicity the school’s football team was receiving at the time.

“This was the time period when this school football team was bringing national attention to the school,” Chang said.

The California School for the Deaf‑Riverside Cubs football team was undefeated in the 2021 regular season, and then went on to win three consecutive CIF titles in 2022, 2023 and 2024. The team inspired the book “The Boys of Riverside” by New York Times reporter Thomas Fuller. In December 2021, the team was featured on “The Kelly Clarkson Show,” where Clarkson donated $25,000 to improve its football field.

Chang said her client was vulnerable to the alleged sexual abuse and exploitation because she suffered from congenital encephalopathy, autism spectrum disorder, and oppositional defiant disorder, which limited her executive functioning in areas of focus and emotions and her ability to self regulate and understand the consequences of her actions.

“She had to be monitored at all times because she couldn’t protect herself,” said Chang, adding that the girl was a cheerleader at the school, which put her in contact with a “certain circle of boys.”

Chang and her law partner, Candice Klein, filed a negligence lawsuit in November 2023 against the school and the California Department of Education, which operates the school through its State Special Schools and Services Division. The lawsuit alleges the defendants were aware the plaintiff was “at risk” in the areas of social stress, self-esteem and executive functioning when she attended the school, making her “profoundly vulnerable” to the alleged sexual abuse and exploitation.

Founded in 1953, CSDR serves about 400 deaf and hard-of-hearing boys and girls in kindergarten through 12th grade from Bakersfield to the Mexican border. It is one of two such schools in the state, with its other campus in Fremont. Some of the students live in cottages on campus.

Deputy Attorney General David Klehm, who is defending the state and school at trial, described the plaintiff not as a vulnerable student and victim, but as an aggressor — an intelligent student with a school reputation as a bully who was aware of her choices and actions.

“This was not a timid, demur person with these vulnerabilities. … This was a person who could hold her own, who was taking boxing lessons, who her own father described as strong and resilient and who was aggressive. … She could handle herself,” Klehm said during his opening statement.

He said the sexual acts between the girl and each boy were consensual, though it violated school policy, and that the girl had been dating the boys at the time.

“She was not being ‘passed around.’ That is a disgusting reference. These were her boyfriends,” Klehm said. “She was, relatively, a normal teenage student at this school.”

One of the boys — the brother of another boy the girl allegedly had sex with — was three years younger than the plaintiff. And according to Klehm, the girl was the aggressor, not the other way around.

“She kept asking him, and he said yes,” Klehm said.

He said the school did not learn of the alleged sexual assaults until September 2022, when her father reported them to the school. The school investigated and called the California Highway Patrol, which handles criminal issues on school grounds because it is a state school. Three of the boys acknowledged they had sexual relations with the girl. One denied it when interviewed by police, Klehm said. It was unclear if the fifth boy admitted to or denied having sex with the girl.

Though none of the boys face any criminal charges, Klehm said some of them were required to speak with school therapists, and one was restricted from attending football practices.

“It wasn’t like the school just did nothing. Every time they found out they tried to do something about it, and they gradually increased it,” Klehm said.

Klehm showed the jury video of the CHP’s interview with the plaintiff in September 2022, in which she answers questions, via an American Sign Language interpreter, regarding an incident in which one of her alleged assailants asked her during class to meet him in the restroom in the Career and Technical Education building for oral sex, which she complied with.

Asked if she knew why the boy asked her to meet him, the plaintiff replied, “I don’t know. Nothing. I don’t know.” She told the interrogating officer she didn’t feel threatened at the time, and when the officer asked her if it was something she wanted to do, her reply, again, was, “I don’t know,” and confirmed that she was a willing participant.

“He wanted me to, so I went ahead and did it,” she said.

Testimony resumed Tuesday, March 10, before Judge Eric Keen.

Orange County Register

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Former California School for Deaf-Riverside student ‘passed around’ for sex with boys

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