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New details have emerged in the sex abuse allegations against a former San Ramon Valley teacher and coach, with the girls involved filing a civil lawsuit in recent months as the trial date in the related criminal case approaches.
Attorneys for the four anonymous minors alleging sexual abuse and harassment at the hands of former biology teacher and cheer coach Nicholas Moseby filed a complaint for civil damages on Nov. 12 that also names multiple former school administrators, the school district and a San Ramon-based cheerleading academy – and includes the bombshell assertion that some of the girls’ classmates did more than adults at the school to confront the abusive behavior.Â
The plaintiffs allege they endured a wide range of harassment and assault at the hands of Moseby during his employment as a teacher with ties to three different San Ramon Valley Unified School District campuses in 2021 and 2022, which ended with his arrest on criminal sex abuse charges in September 2022, as well as during his tenure coaching for NorCal Elite.
Moseby has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him. More than two years later – with Moseby out on bail since December 2022 – the criminal trial is approaching next month after being postponed a total of five times to date.
SRVUSD officials and NorCal Elite, in separate filings by their attorneys in the civil case, have denied allegations of wrongdoing against them.
In addition to providing more details into the allegations against Moseby, the new lawsuit includes specific claims of negligence on the part of the school district, former school administrators and NorCal Elite, as well as intentional infliction of emotional distress and sexual abuse of a minor by Moseby.
According to attorney for the plaintiffs, Moseby’s first two alleged victims during his time at San Ramon Valley High School in the 2021-22 school year made countless reports and complaints about his behavior to school and district officials, who failed to properly investigate the allegations and would go on to instead move him to a new post at Diablo Valley Middle School, where he would encounter the youngest of the four plaintiffs.
Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 made their first written complaints about Moseby on Oct. 21, 2021 alleging that he had touched the latter in a sexual manner and made “sexually charged” comments to both in his biology class at San Ramon Valley High School, such as whispering “you’re lucky you’re hot” to them, according to the lawsuit.
The two girls were reportedly then told by SRVHS office staff that they would receive a phone call from then-assistant principal Nicole Chaplan. They returned to the office asking to speak with then-principal Whitney Cottrell the following day after not receiving that phone call and filed new complaints after being told that their complaints from the previous day had been lost, according to the lawsuit.
After receiving no response, Jane Doe 2 sent an email to Cottrell on Oct. 28, 2021 asking if she had seen the girls’ complaints and when they could discuss them, receiving no response once again, her attorneys wrote. On Oct. 29, 2021, her parent emailed Cottrell demanding a call back with details about the investigation into the girls’ complaints. Assistant principal Ann-Marie Walters said that the school had received the complaints and would be investigating them.
On Nov. 10, 2021, Walters responded to the parent to say that the complaints had been investigated and concluded that no inappropriate comments had been made, with Moseby “horrified to hear what was reported”, according to the lawsuit.
Jane Doe 2 would go on to file another complaint the following month over Moseby allegedly “sexually massaging her shoulders in class” — an incident that was reportedly photographed by other students who were “appalled by it” according to attorneys. While meeting with the principal to discuss the complaint in January 2022, “Chaplan did not believe Jane Doe 2 and dismissed her,” according to attorneys, who added that the girl’s parents did not receive any communication about the meeting and that the district had said that the report was lost.
Both girls would go on to file another series of written complaints on March 14 and March 18 of that year after Moseby allegedly told Jane Doe 2, “You need to find a better friend than (Jane Doe 1) because you are so much prettier than her,” and told Jane Doe 1, “Your hair is nice but not your face.”
During a third meeting between Chaplan and Jane Doe 2, the lawsuit alleges the principal said, “This is why he (Moseby) won’t be getting a cheer job at SRVHS,” despite Moseby then helping to coach the cheer and stunt program at Monte Vista High School.
Nonetheless, both girls continued to remain in Moseby’s class and endure sexual harassment in the months that followed, according to their attorneys, with Jane Doe 1 only being removed from the class after her father went to Chaplan’s office in person and demanded it on March 25, 2022.
“Chaplan was dismissive, defensive and wanted nothing to do with him, however Jane Doe 1 was finally removed from Moseby’s class,” the girls’ attorneys from Walnut Creek firm O’Connor, Runckel & O’Malley said in the complaint.
“Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 reported to the SRVHS administration throughout the 2021.2022 school year that Moseby repeatedly made sexually charged comments about them during class and unlawfully touched Jane Doe 2 and the administration of SRVHS did nothing,” they continued.
According to the complaint, the lack of action by the school’s administration was in contrast to the girls’ classmates, with word of Moseby’s alleged misconduct spreading throughout the student body, who learned that he allegedly sent inappropriate pictures to underage girls via Snapchat, also using the platform to post pictures of students and cheerleaders “squatting and stretching”.
A group of boys reportedly obtained the “thirst snap” that Moseby had allegedly been sending to their underage female peers, then taped an edited print-out of the image with the word “pedophile” on his office door.
Nonetheless, according to the girls’ attorneys, Moseby continued to be supported by SRVHS administrators, with Cottrell calling him one of the school’s “beloved teachers” in an email to the school community on May 26, 2022 and “that he was the victim because he received texts calling him a racial slur”.
“Cottrell never mentioned Moseby’s sexual abuses over the past year,” the attorneys wrote.
According to the lawsuit, this was because there was no Title IX report filed following the girls’ complaints to the school, “no mandatory reporting to law enforcement by the district” or school administrators, and “the district decided to handle it internally without notifying parents or other students.”
“Jane Doe 1 and Jane Doe 2 began making their written complaints on October 21, 2021, and made complaint after complaint until late into the school year,” attorneys wrote in the complaint. “After realizing she could not just ignore or lose every complaint, Chaplan conducted a ‘sham’ of an investigation with the sole goal of protecting Moseby and ‘covering up’ what he had done.”
Chaplan was allegedly a close friend of Moseby’s whom he listed as a personal reference when he was hired in 2020, while Cottrell and Walters “furthered the coverup of Moseby’s actions by giving Chaplan unilateral power to internally control the Moseby investigation” according to attorneys.
Upon Chaplan’s departure for a new role as principal of Lafayette’s Stanley Middle School at the end of the 2021 to 2022 school year – where she was ultimately ousted months later amid investigations into her role in the Moseby scandal – former SRVUSD superintendent John Malloy reportedly told authorities that “The complete investigative report cannot be located and that it is concerning the school cannot locate the files.”
“It is plaintiffs’ understanding and belief these lost or destroyed files contain most of the information collected during the Moseby 2021/2022 investigation,” attorneys wrote.
Moseby also departed SRVHS at the end of the school year when he was “quietly transferred” to Diablo Valley Middle School, “a different school within the district where he would then be in charge of and in close contact with younger and less vocal children,” according to attorneys.
“District moved Moseby to a middle school where no students, teachers, nor parents knew about his prior sexual crimes and complaints during the prior 2021/2022 school year,” attorneys wrote.
It was while at DVMS that Moseby met his third alleged victim according to attorneys, allegedly sexually assaulting and harassing the then-13-year-old Jane Doe 3 during gym class in September 2022, according to the girls’ attorneys.
“On that day, Moseby came up behind Jane Doe 3 and pressed the front of his body against her back,” attorneys wrote. “Jane Doe 3 felt a hard object from his pelvic area on her back as he pressed against her.”
“Later in PE class, Moseby ordered her to do bear crawls while he watched her,” they continued. “Moseby was smirking while she was doing it, telling Jane Doe 3 he liked watching the way she does bear crawls.”
During the same timeframe, Moseby allegedly assaulted a 15-year-old Monte Vista High School cheerleader who began taking private lessons with him at San Ramon-based cheer studio NorCal Elite at the advice of the district “without any mention of his past inappropriate and criminal behavior at SRVHS the year before,” according to the girls’ attorneys.
“When Jane Doe 4 began taking private cheerleading lessons with Moseby in August/September 2022 at NorCal gym, Moseby sexually assaulted her during one of her trainings,” attorneys wrote. “Moseby stood by Jane Doe 4’s side, rubbing her buttocks, up and down while talking to her.”
Gregory McCoy, the Danville-based attorney retained by NorCal Elite, was the first to file an answer to the 2024 lawsuit on behalf of his clients on Dec. 20, alleging that the cheer studio had no knowledge of allegations of misbehavior against Moseby and that he had passed a background check, as well as having a level of credibility during his time at the studio thanks to his employment with the school district.
“This Answering Defendant had no basis upon which to believe that Defendant Moseby had engaged in any conduct that was harmful to Plaintiff Doe 4 and received only a single parent communication expressing any concern about Defendant Moseby, which acknowledged that such Complaint was based upon ‘rumors’ and ‘these rumors’ contained no specific allegations,” McCoy wrote.
McCoy did not question Jane Doe 4’s allegations against Moseby, instead arguing that the alleged abuse was not the fault of NorCal Elite and her “claims are not the fault of this Defendant, but the fault of others, including individuals and entities, and their agents, officers, directors and employees.”
Jason Sherman, the Sacramento-based attorney for SRVUSD and the three SRVHS administrators named in the complaint, submitted an answer on behalf of the district on Jan. 21 denying the allegations in the complaint.
“Defendant generally denies each and every, all and singular, conjunctively and disjunctively, the allegations contained in each and every cause of action of Plaintiffs’ Complaint on file herein, and further denies generally and specifically that Plaintiffs sustained any injury, damage or loss by reason of any act, omission or negligence on the part of Defendant, and further denies that Plaintiffs were or will be damaged in any sum or sums whatsoever, or at all,” Sherman wrote.
As of Friday, Moseby himself had not yet obtained an attorney in the civil case.
Moseby’s criminal trial date is set for Feb. 24, with a case management conference scheduled for Feb. 10. The next hearing in the civil case is a case management conference scheduled for March 27.
