What happened to you at Fancher Creek Elementary was not okay.

East Tulare Avenue, Fresno's east side. A Clovis Unified elementary, and a second-grade teacher who'd been there since 1998. Five women say he abused them in that room, 1998 to 2005. One of them was seven when she told the principal, the vice principal and the counselor, and the school, they say, decided she was lying. He kept teaching. In January 2012, at a different Clovis school, he was arrested for what he did to another second-grader and filmed, and in 2014 a federal judge gave him 38 years. The five sued the district in June 2025. So if you were in that building in those years, or any year, this page was written for you. It's short, and the questions aren't hard.

WatchingSeptember 2026: the complaint five former Fancher Creek students filed against Clovis Unified on June 18, 2025 is pending in Fresno County. No ruling, no settlement and no trial date that we have found. The teacher's federal case closed in April 2014 with a 38-year sentence. The questions work now.

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Looking for the page about the whole district? Clovis Unified School District survivors: Fancher Creek, Freedom Elementary and the district's other schools on one page, with the district's full record.

This applies to you no matter what

You told someone at the school and nothing happened. That is exactly what the complaint says happened to a seven-year-old in the 1998-99 school year, and it is the part of the case that is about the district, not about one man.
You weren't one of the five. Five women filed. Their complaint covers seven school years in one classroom. Five is who filed, not a count of everyone who sat in it.
It was his classroom, during school hours. That's where the record on this page puts it, at both schools.
What happened to you was less than what the complaint describes, or you honestly can't say what it was. You were seven or eight. Nobody expects you to have the words for it now.
You are 30 and it feels like another life. Do the arithmetic on a second-grader in that room in 1998: born around 1991. California gives someone hurt as a child until their 40th birthday, and for that classroom, that is years away yet.
You're a parent, a sibling, a friend asking for someone who can't. Reach out anyway.

The Fancher Creek record: what the complaint alleges, the arrest, the federal plea, the lawsuit, and when

We didn't write what's below. A federal judge did, and the plaintiffs' complaint, and the reporters who read it, and we link to every line. Where it says a complaint alleges something, that is all it is. The plea and the sentence are the court's. The district has not admitted anything in the pending case, and nothing on this page decides it.

1998 to 2005, as the 2025 complaint describes it

Neng Yang taught second grade at Fancher Creek; in 1998, the first year in the complaint, he was still a student teacher. What five former students say he did to them there, in the complaint they filed in 2025, is groping, fondling and coerced sex acts, seven school years of it, through 2005. Two things in it are about the school. One of the five was seven in 1998-99 when she told the principal, the vice principal and the school counselor. They didn't believe her, is the short version. The complaint's version: officials accused her of lying and referred her for psychological treatment, and nobody investigated or reported anything. Then 2004-05, and this one's in the complaint too: a teacher saw him showing a student child pornography on his phone, and the girl, not him, was the one school officials sat down and interrogated, and encouraged to keep quiet. He kept teaching. Clovis Roundup.

January and February 2012

He'd moved by then. Freedom Elementary, another Clovis Unified school, second grade again. He was arrested in late January 2012 and held from January 27. On February 9, 2012 Homeland Security Investigations announced a four-count federal grand jury indictment for using his cell phone, on multiple occasions, to record the sexual abuse of a minor. There was a state case too: 45 counts in Fresno County Superior Court, involving a child in his class, and he pleaded not guilty to them. Clovis Unified, meanwhile, put him on unpaid leave and started the process to fire him. ICE / Homeland Security Investigations.

Within about a year of the arrest

The Freedom Elementary family settled. An insurance company paid the girl's family just over $2 million in an out-of-court agreement, and Clovis Unified said the settlement was reached by working quickly and collaboratively together to take what steps were available to do what is right, and it put windows in every classroom door. ABC7.

March 24, 2014

Two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, and Yang pleaded guilty to both, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, the one in Fresno. The U.S. Attorney's office put the plea this way: videos made in January 2012, a child under 12, sexual contact between the minor and Yang, all while the minor was under Yang's supervisory control. He admitted it. U.S. Attorney, Eastern District of California.

April 30, 2014

The judgment is Senior District Judge Anthony W. Ishii's, case 1:12-cr-00037, and it shows how you get to 38 years. Guilty on counts one and two, 18 U.S.C. § 2251(a), sexual exploitation of a minor, one offense concluded January 12, 2012 and the other January 26. Count one, 262 months. Count two, 194. They run consecutive, so 456 months. Supervised release for life after that; counts three and four dismissed on the government's motion. Judgment, U.S. District Court (govinfo).

June 18, 2025

Five women sued the Clovis Unified School District over Fancher Creek. Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala filed it in Fresno County. Its claim, in one line: district officials were told, and didn't investigate or report. One of the plaintiffs, 28 now, a mother of two, said it in public: the district was protecting him, and kept him teaching at that school knowing what he was doing. The district said it had not been served yet and would respond when it was. By then Yang had been in federal prison for a decade. Los Angeles Times (via Yahoo News).

December 19, 2025 to September 2026

A second childhood sexual abuse suit against Clovis Unified, over a different school and different adults, was filed December 19, 2025. It is not a Fancher Creek case and it belongs on the district's page, not this one. On Fancher Creek itself: nothing new filed, ruled or settled that we have found as of September 2026. We check. EdSource.

We checked this on September 15, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from December 19, 2025 to September 2026. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a Fancher Creek Elementary lawsuit

The district. Not the school, which is a building and a name, not a thing you can collect a judgment from, and not mainly the teacher. Yang answered for himself in a federal courtroom in 2014, and he is not the one the five women are after. They sued the Clovis Unified School District: the public body that hired him, ran Fancher Creek in every one of those years, and, the complaint alleges, had a seven-year-old in the office in 1998 saying what he was doing and sent her to counseling instead. That is the theory. A teacher answers for what he did. A district that was told and kept him in front of second-graders answers for the children he reached after that.

Clovis Unified is a public entity, and that changes two things a lawyer will walk you through. You do not file a government claim with the district first, whatever year it was; a childhood claim goes straight to court. And there is no cap in California on what a jury can award for what was actually done to a child at a public school. What the district can argue about is what it knew and when, which is why the 1998 report and the 2004 phone incident in the complaint matter so much. They are allegations. Nobody has ruled on them.

So this page is one school. The district's own page is where the rest lives, at /clovis-unified-survivors: Freedom Elementary and the settlement there, the district's other schools, the same defendant. If your years at a Clovis Unified school were somewhere other than East Tulare Avenue, that is your page. If they were at Fancher Creek, start here. Same questions, same survivors on the phone.

Your deadline: the California statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse at a public elementary 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 before 2024, Code of Civil Procedure section 340.11, and it is why we ask whether you were born in 1987 or later. If you were, the door is open on age alone. Do the arithmetic on a second-grader at Fancher Creek in the fall of 1998: born in 1991, give or take a year. Everyone in that classroom from 1998 to 2005 is inside on age, and will be until 2031 at the soonest.

Because Clovis Unified is a public entity there is one more rule, and here it helps. You do not file a government claim first (Government Code 905(m); Code of Civil Procedure 340.11(s)). The six-month claim deadline that trips up other cases against a school district does not apply to childhood sexual abuse, and it no longer matters which year it was. What matters is your age. Born before 1987 and the fortieth birthday has come or is close, so what's left is the discovery rule plus a showing that the district knew or should have known, and a lawyer has to look at those facts before anyone promises anything. We won't. One more, for completeness: conduct on or after January 1, 2024 has no deadline at all, under section 340.1.

Put plainly, then. 1998 to 2005 at Fancher Creek: you almost certainly still have time, and you'll have it for years. What doesn't keep is the rest of it. Who else was in the room. Which parent went to the office, and who was behind the desk. Five women already put those names in a complaint. That is the part worth one call now.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told a soul. Not then, not when his arrest was on the news in 2012, not since. For a seven-year-old, and for the adult she became, that was a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
You told someone and got told you were making it up. One of the five says the school did exactly that to her in 1998. Being disbelieved then is the reason the case exists, not a reason to stay quiet now.
You liked him. Kids did. He taught for 18 years before the police came. That is in the record too, and it is part of how it worked.
It never went as far as what the complaint describes, and you figure that means it doesn't count. It counts.
The girl at Freedom Elementary got a settlement, and you think that closed the book. It closed hers. The Fancher Creek years are a different case, filed more than a decade later, and it is open.
You live somewhere else now. Half of the class of 2001 does.

Schools covered

One school. Fancher Creek Elementary, at 5948 East Tulare Avenue on Fresno's east side, California 93727. Clovis Unified has run it since it opened in 1980, K through sixth, 649 kids or so on the last count. The classrooms, the yard, the minutes when the rest of the class was at PE and one child wasn't, an after-school program, a field trip, anything that ran under Fancher Creek's name. 1998 to 2005 for the teacher in the record; any year for anyone else. A different Clovis Unified school, Freedom, another elementary, an intermediate, one of the high schools? The district has its own page, /clovis-unified-survivors; it's the same defendant and the same questions. Answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Was Neng Yang convicted?

He was, by plea, in federal court. He pleaded guilty on March 24, 2014 to two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California, and five weeks later, April 30, 2014, Judge Anthony Ishii gave him 456 months. That's 38 years, and supervised release for the rest of his life once he's out. And that case was a second-grader at Freedom Elementary, January 2012, not Fancher Creek. The Fancher Creek years are the civil complaint, and those are allegations until a court says otherwise.

Can I sue Clovis Unified over what happened at Fancher Creek Elementary?

Five women already have, in June 2025, and the district has not settled it; nothing has been decided. Whether you can comes down mostly to when you were born, which is what the questions above sort out, and for anyone who was a second-grader there between 1998 and 2005 the honest answer is yes, very likely: you were born after 1987 and the door is open on age. Born earlier, a lawyer has to look at the discovery rule and what the district knew.

He's in federal prison for 38 years. What else is there?

Criminal court decided what happens to him, and only for what he did at Freedom Elementary in 2012. Civil court decides what a school district owes the children it left in his classroom at Fancher Creek for seven years before that, and those are different questions with different answers. Nothing in his 38 years was for you.

Did the school know about Neng Yang before he was arrested?

The five women say it did, and the record above lays out why they say so. A seven-year-old's report to the principal, the vice principal and the counselor in the 1998-99 school year, answered, the complaint alleges, by calling her a liar and sending her to counseling. A teacher who saw what was on his phone in 2004-05, followed by an interrogation of the girl, not of him. The district's spokeswoman said it would review the suit when served and respond. No court has found that the district knew. Whether it knew enough, soon enough, is the question a civil case asks.

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.