If it happened to you at American Canyon High, it wasn't okay.

Brad Rowell taught PE at American Canyon High from 2014 on, and coached the Wolves' cross country and track teams, right up until the day in April 2024 he was arrested on campus. (The school itself only opened in 2010. He was there for most of its life.) He's at Avenal State Prison now. Fifteen years, on a guilty plea, for what he did to a 15-year-old runner he coached. Three others, former students, say it goes back further than that. Years further, to his gym classes. If you were a student there and something happened, this is about you.

Free
Confidential
No obligation
You never pay a dollar

6 questions. Your answers are private and go to one person.

This applies to you no matter what

You ran for him. Cross country, track, the summer runs, the rides to meets in his car. That is where the criminal case lived, and where the district's own September 2024 report said the grooming happened: texts, a call every morning, personal outings.
You never ran a step. You had him for PE, or weight training, and that's all. Which is exactly what the three who sued in 2025 describe, gym class and nothing to do with the team, and for the two boys it goes back to 2015.
You told somebody. A counselor. A teacher. Your mom, in an email to the principal. One student did that in April 2024, and her lawsuit says the principal took it to the coach before anybody took it to the police. The principal was charged for that, and acquitted by a jury. That answers the criminal charge and nothing more; what the school knew, and when, no court has touched.
It was smaller than what ended up in the criminal case. A hand where it had no business being, a look that lasted too long, a remark about your body in front of the class. That is what two of the three 2025 plaintiffs describe, and a school answers for it.
You are 25 now and figure the window shut years ago. It didn't. California's deadline runs to your 40th birthday, and because the school didn't exist before 2010 there is no older rule for you to trip over.
You're a parent, a teammate, a friend asking for someone who can't. Reach out anyway.

The American Canyon High record: the arrest, the plea, the sentence, the lawsuits, and when

We didn't write what's below. The Napa County District Attorney did, and two judges, and the reporters who sat in the courtroom, and we link to every one. Where a line says a complaint alleges something, that is exactly what it is: a claim in a filed lawsuit, not a finding. We don't add to it.

April 2024

April 9. A student went to the school resource officer about Brad Matthew Rowell, the track and cross country coach, and he was arrested on the American Canyon High campus. The District Attorney's filing ran to 21 felony counts, lewd act upon a child and unlawful sexual intercourse and oral copulation of a person under 18 and possession of matter depicting a minor among them, plus special allegations of a vulnerable victim and a position of trust. Eight days later Superintendent Rosanna Mucetti stood in the school gym at a town hall and announced the district would fire him. Staff, she said, had heard rumors days before the arrest. And then: "It is clear our system has failed us, and we have to take responsibility." Napa Valley Register.

June 27, 2024

Now the principal too: the DA charged Andrew Goff, a mandated reporter, with one misdemeanor count of not reporting suspected child abuse (Penal Code 11166), and in the same release counted Rowell's charges at 25 felonies across more than one jurisdiction. Napa County DA.

October 29, 2024

Then the student sued. Jane Doe v. Rowell and the Napa Valley Unified School District, Napa County Superior Court, sixteen pages. Sexual battery by Rowell, it alleges, and negligence by the district, which it says didn't promptly report him to law enforcement. And it lays out a sequence: April 3, a student tells a counselor about the rumors; the report goes up to the principal; the principal goes and speaks with Rowell. Not the police. Napa Valley Register.

December 5, 2024

Rowell's plea: guilty, and no contest on some counts, to 10 felonies, two victims. The American Canyon runner, whom he abused from 2023 into 2024. And a girl under 14, outside Napa County, between 2008 and 2010. The deal he took was 15 years in state prison, lifetime registration as a sex offender, a 10-year protective order for each of the two, and restitution. Napa County DA.

January 6, 2025

Fifteen years, from Judge Scott R.L. Young. The Register's story on the sentencing also got into the district's own September 2024 investigation, which had concluded that Rowell groomed the student (texting, phone calls every morning, personal outings) and that a teacher had flagged the rumor to the principal on April 3, a full week before the student went to the resource officer. Napa Valley Register.

June 5, 2025

Three days of trial, and a Napa County jury found Goff not guilty on the misdemeanor failure-to-report charge. His lawyers' argument: what he'd been told never rose to the level of a reasonable suspicion of child abuse. Press Democrat.

July 18, 2025

Three more former students sued Rowell and the district: two men and a woman, filing as John Doe M.W., John Doe A.R. and Jane Doe J.M. Their complaint alleges he fondled the boys in PE around 2015, when they were about 15, and touched and stared at the girl in 2017 and 2018, and that the district was negligent in hiring and supervision and that staff failed to report. Rowell, from prison, has denied every word of it. Press Democrat.

April to July 2026

The first student's case never reached the jury set for May 11. She reached a conditional settlement with Rowell in April, terms not disclosed, and in May withdrew her suit against the district; no settlement with the district has been reported. The 2025 case has had a rougher road. A judge ordered its three plaintiffs to answer the district's questions about what happened to them, in detail, and then on July 27 the lead plaintiff asked out of the case and his own lawyers asked out too. Napa Valley Register.

We checked this on September 12, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from April to July 2026. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in an American Canyon High School lawsuit

The district. Napa Valley Unified runs American Canyon High, and it's the district that hired Rowell in 2014 and kept him on the field and in the weight room for the ten years after. A coach who abuses a student answers for himself, and Rowell has. A district answers for what it knew and what it did with it, and that is the question both lawsuits put to it: negligent hiring, negligent supervision, staff who did not report. Some of what the district knew is in its own words. Its superintendent stood in the school gym in April 2024 and said the system had failed. Its own investigation, five months later, concluded the coach had groomed the girl. And by the district's account and the DA's, the principal was told a week before the police were. He was acquitted of the criminal charge. Whether the school was negligent is a different question, asked in a different court, and no court has answered it yet.

The district is a public body, which changes a few things a lawyer will walk you through. No punitive damages against it, ever, but no cap on what a jury can award. And because the school opened in August 2010, nobody who went there has to file a government claim first. That older hurdle only applies to conduct before 2009.

Rowell himself is a defendant too, and he is not going anywhere; his first parole hearing is in May 2034. Punitive damages are available against him personally. He settled the first suit and answered the second with a handwritten denial from Avenal. Your case does not need his, and it does not need the 2025 case either. That one is in trouble, its lead plaintiff gone and its lawyers asking out, and none of that is a ruling on you. It is a reason to bring your own facts, told well, to a lawyer who does this.

Your deadline: the California statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse at a public school

Until you turn 40, or five years from the day you understood what it did to you, whichever is later. That is California's rule for anyone abused as a minor (Code of Civil Procedure 340.1), and it is why we ask your birth year: born in 1987 or later and the door is open on age alone. The arithmetic for this school is easy: the boys in the 2025 complaint were about 15 back in 2015, and they've got something like fifteen years left.

Anything after January 1, 2024 has no deadline at all. One more thing, because the district is a public body. Normally you'd have to file a government claim before suing one. For abuse after the start of 2009 you don't (Government Code 905(m)), and American Canyon High didn't open until August 2010, which puts every student it has ever had on the right side of that line. A different Napa Valley Unified school, before 2009? Narrower path. A lawyer needs to look at your facts before anyone says anything at all.

Plainly: nobody from Rowell's decade at American Canyon is anywhere near out of time. What runs out is not the calendar. It is the texts, the emails, the teammates who remember, and the version of you that is still willing to say it.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told a soul. Not a teammate, not a parent, nobody.
You liked him. He was the coach who said you'd be the fastest on the team if you joined. That is in the complaint, too.
It never went as far as what was in the criminal case, and you figure that means it doesn't count.
You think the student who sued in 2024 got everyone's answer. She withdrew her case against the district. Nothing was decided.
You're a guy. Two of the three people who sued in 2025 are, and you live somewhere else now, like most of the classes of 2016 through 2024.

Schools covered

American Canyon High School, 3000 Newell Drive, and everything that ran under its name: PE and weight training classes, the Wolves' cross country and track programs, summer runs, rides to and from meets, off-campus team events. A different Napa Valley Unified school? The questions still work. Answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue American Canyon High School or Napa Valley Unified?

Former students already have, twice. Whether you can depends mostly on when you were born and when it happened, which is what the questions above sort out. The school opened in 2010, so the public-school claim hurdle doesn't reach anyone who went there.

The coach already pleaded guilty. Does that help my case?

It settles what he did to the two people in the criminal case. It does not decide what the school knew or what it owes anyone else; a civil case asks that, and nobody has answered it.

The first student dropped her case against the district. So is it all over?

No. She settled with the coach, then in May 2026 pulled her claim against the district too, which means no court ever got to say whether the district was negligent. Nothing decided, either way. Her decision binds her. It has nothing to say about yours.

What kind of lawyer do I need?

A civil lawyer who sues school districts for institutional sexual abuse, not only the individual. That is the only kind we work with, and the firm we work with takes California cases wherever you live now.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Here, nothing. Every case is on contingency. The lawyer is paid only out of what is recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing. Not for the call, not for the review, not for the case.

Who sees your form

Kerim Eravci · Survivor Advocate · Not a lawyer

I was a victim, and I waited. Not because I didn't know what happened to me (I knew every day), but because I'd decided it was over, mine to carry, nobody's business. When I finally went looking for a lawyer, the answer came back in two words I'd never thought about: statute of limitations. My time had run out while I was busy getting through it.

What that has cost me since is a long story, and I'll tell you the whole thing in private, if you want it. The short version is the reason my name is on this page: I'm here to help people do what I wish I'd done, which is find out where you stand while the door's still open.

I'm not a lawyer. I read what you send, I call you once, on your terms, and nothing gets filed unless you say so. Ask sooner than I did.

Kerim Eravci is not an attorney. He's a survivor.

What happens next. Three steps, nothing more until you say so.

You answer 6 questions. Nothing is filed. Nothing starts.
A survivor calls you, once. Not a robot, not a call center. Someone who has been where you are.
You decide. You find out your options. If you want to stop there, you stop there.

How this works

ME2 Survivors Alliance protects the heart. Licensed California attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

You never pay a dollar

Every case is on contingency. There is no charge for the call, the review, or the case. The firm is paid only out of a recovery, and if there is no recovery you owe nothing.