SAN JOSE, Calif. — After years of yearning to hold her former high school accountable for failing to protect her from sexual abuse by her coach, Allison Brown, a former star basketball player at Valley Christian High School in San Jose, got her chance when a new state law opened a three-year window that allows students to sue their schools for failing to protect them from abuse they suffered years ago.
Brown sued Valley Christian Schools, the group of private religious campuses that includes her old high school, for negligence and harassment last year, and has since settled the case. Valley Christian paid Brown an undisclosed amount, without admission of fault.
It wasn’t easy, she said, to take action against the school where her brother, friends and former teammates attended, and one she once felt a part of. But in the end, she concluded school officials were complicit in failing to protect her from abuse by her coach.
