Quick Take
The Santa Cruz City Schools district has agreed to settle a lawsuit with two former students who accused ex-principal Steven Myers of sexual abuse in the late 1980s. The men allege Myers gave students massages, encouraged minimal clothing and provided drugs during a summer program he supervised.
The Santa Cruz City Schools district has reached a $4.5 million settlement agreement with two former students who accused an ex-teacher of sexually abusing them in the late 1980s.
Each of the 49-year-old men, who chose to remain anonymous, will receive $2.25 million. They accused Steven Myers of sexually abusing them between 1988 and 1991 while they were in middle school and high school.
One of the former students, whose pseudonym in court records was John Roe 4, told Lookout he feels a sense of validation.
“The reason I went forward with this is to get some closure, to do everything I can in order to be complete and move forward,” he said Wednesday.
The other student, referred to as John Roe 3 in court documents, said in a statement that he hopes bringing this case will “protect future children from abuse.”
“The hope moving forward is that Steve Myers will never teach again and end up prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” he said. “As for Santa Cruz City Schools, this is a wakeup call to protect the children under their care.”
Santa Cruz City Schools spokesperson Sam Rolens said that as the allegations are from almost 40 years ago, “most current employees were themselves in grade school.”
“In Santa Cruz City Schools, the education, safety and the well being of students is our highest priority,” he said via email. “We are grateful for and follow the federal and state regulations and our own board policies which are now in place to provide safety and transparency.”
Myers resigned from the district in 1991. Court records show he didn’t have an attorney and did not file a response to the lawsuit.
The school district hired Myers in 1981 as principal of Branciforte Junior High School. He later established the Traveling School Summer Program, a six-week summer program for students with behavioral and academic challenges, which he ran at Crittenden Middle School in Mountain View and later introduced in Santa Cruz. Both of the students alleged in the court case that Myers sexually abused them during the program.
They alleged that the district knew that Myers behaved inappropriately with male students. In the lawsuit, they say he gave the boys massages, tied them up, encouraged them to wear little clothing, provided them with illegal drugs and invited them “to spend time with him outside of school at his home in his hot tub.”
Myers, who lives in Colorado, has long faced accusations of sex abuse but hasn’t been criminally prosecuted, according to court documents and a Santa Cruz Sentinel article.
A separate lawsuit filed in 2022 by a 52-year-old man listed as John Doe M.C. claimed that the school district failed to act on warnings about Myers, including multiple police reports and investigations concerning his alleged sexual misbehavior with underage children dated back to the 1970s.
Santa Cruz police investigated Myers for sexual abuse of minors in 1980 and 1991, John Doe M.C.’s lawsuit says, and Myers admitted in a 1996 police investigation to having a sexual attraction to underage boys and sexual contact with minors.
He does not appear to have been charged with any crime in relation to the lawsuits in Santa Cruz, according to Assistant District Attorney Steve Drottar. Myers’ teaching credentials have since been revoked in both California and Colorado for sexual misconduct, the lawsuit says.
Santa Cruz City Schools said in court documents that since the allegations were more than 40 years old, it couldn’t confirm the details, but that the district should not be held liable for any alleged criminal behavior that occurred outside of Myers’ regular job duties.
Lauren Cerri, attorney for both of the former students, said despite the amount of time that has passed since the allegations took place, the lawsuit is still important.
“The fact that it happened so long ago doesn’t mean it’s OK or that they can get away with it,” she said. “It would have been so easy to prevent this, and [the district] allowed it.”
Cerri, of San Jose-based law firm of Cerri, Boskovich & Allard, is also representing two former students from Crittenden Middle School who accuse Myers of sexual abuse in the 1970s when he was running the summer program there.
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