What happened to you at a Long Beach Unified school was not okay.

Lindbergh Middle School. Jordan High. Jackie Robinson Academy. Cabrillo High. Burcham Elementary. Different corners of Long Beach, different decades, and the same school district on the other side of every one of those cases. One of its teachers is in state prison for 80 years to life, and seven of his former students are suing the district in Los Angeles Superior Court, saying it saw the warnings and left him in a classroom. A Cabrillo coach pleaded no contest last November. A new complaint over a Burcham teacher arrived in March. So if you went to one of those schools, or to any of the 83 the district runs, and a teacher, a coach, a substitute did something to you: this is about you. It was written for you.

WatchingSeptember 2026: the seven-plaintiff case against Long Beach Unified over its former teacher Mark Santo (Los Angeles Superior Court, 23STCV31632, filed December 27, 2023) is still pending, with no trial date on the public docket, and a complaint over a Burcham Elementary teacher, served on the district in March 2026, is at its start. The questions below work for anyone, any campus.

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

This applies to you no matter what

Your school isn't on the list of six. Fine. That matters less than you'd think, because Long Beach Unified runs 83 schools, Avalon to Lakewood, and in every case on this page the defendant is the district. Not the campus.
You were never part of a criminal case. Three young women testified at Santo's trial; seven are suing. Nobody has ever counted everyone he reached, and the same goes for the Cabrillo case, where police said in July 2025 there may be more victims.
You told somebody. A principal, maybe, or a counselor; your mom marched into the office. Nothing happened. Read the first entry in the record below, the Jackie Robinson Academy one, and you'll find the 2021 complaint alleges exactly that, principal and counselor both. Which is the heart of a case against the district. It is not a reason to stay quiet.
Maybe it was 2001. Maybe 1996. Ancient history, you'd say. Except the Burcham complaint, served on the district this March, is about fifth grade in 1999 to 2001, and the year it happened turns out to matter less than the year you were born. The deadline section explains why.
What happened was less than what got read out in court, or you honestly can't put a word on it. A substitute showing a class what was on his phone: that's in the record here. Thirteen-year-olds don't have words for this. Neither do most of the adults they grow into, and that's fine. You don't need the words to make a call.
Asking for someone else? Your kid, a teammate, a friend who can't make the call yet. Reach out anyway. One last thing: for anything on or after January 1, 2024, there is no deadline at all.

The Long Beach Unified record: the complaints, the convictions, the sentences, and when

None of what follows is ours. Prosecutors wrote it, and judges, and the families' complaints, and the district's own personnel file as the Long Beach Post pried it loose, and we link to every line. Where a sentence says a complaint alleges something, that is all it is; the pleas and the sentences are the courts'. And because this page covers a whole district: the records below name Lindbergh Middle School, Jordan High School, Rogers Middle School, Jackie Robinson Academy, Cabrillo High School and Burcham Elementary. Any other Long Beach Unified school is covered because the same district ran it, not because a separate record on that campus is cited here. Jordan High has its own page, and so does Lindbergh; this one tells the district's story, not theirs again.

February 11, 2013, and August 12, 2021

Two women, 21 by the time they filed, sued Long Beach Unified and Jackie Robinson Academy in Los Angeles Superior Court on August 12, 2021, as Jane Doe B.A. and Jane Doe V.E. Their complaint goes back to a single sixth period on February 11, 2013, when they were in eighth grade at the K-8 school on Pine Avenue and their English teacher was out. The substitute, it alleges, was Pietro Dalia, then 49, who showed pornography from his phone to the class and handled himself with a toy dinosaur claw at the whiteboard; when a neighboring room complained about the noise, the principal came in, told the students she didn't want any more calls about them, and left. When one girl started recording him, the complaint says, he chased her to the back of the room and touched her. The students reported it that day, to the principal and then a counselor, and were told, the complaint says, that if they were lying they'd be in trouble. Parents met the school the next morning and weren't believed either. He kept working there, the complaint states, until parents went to the police; charges followed in September 2013, and the complaint says he later pleaded no contest to four counts. That last part is the complaint's account; we have not seen the criminal file ourselves. Long Beach Post.

February 16 and April 7, 2023

The district's lawyers had argued that a substitute's conduct was outside the course and scope of his employment and that nothing in his background should have warned it off hiring him. The case never reached the jury that was set for March 27. Jane Doe V.E. had dropped her claims in April 2022; Jane Doe B.A.'s lawyers filed a notice of conditional settlement with Judge Mark C. Kim on February 16, 2023, no terms disclosed, and on April 7 her dismissal with prejudice was entered. Whatever was paid, if anything, has never been made public, and we don't guess. Long Beach Post.

June 5 and October 17, 2023

"You are a predator, Mr. Santo." Judge Laura Laesecke said that on October 17, giving Mark Anthony Santo 80 years to life, and then said this, about the district: "You were allowed to resign and my understanding is you decided to teach again." The jury that convicted him, back on June 5, had needed less than a day. Fifteen years he'd taught history for this district, Lindbergh Middle School and then Jordan High, athletic director there too. The verdict, count by count: lewd acts on a child under 14, twice over. Forcible sexual penetration. Forcible oral copulation. Assault with intent to commit those acts, twice. And the multiple-victims allegation, found true. The three girls. One had sat in his Lindbergh classroom in 2012-13. One was 13, a family friend, at his La Mirada home in 2015. The third, a former student, was just 18 when it happened at that same house in 2018. Long Beach Post.

December 27, 2023

Seven former students, Jane Does 1 through 7, filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court, case 23STCV31632, Department 11 at the Spring Street Courthouse, designated provisionally complex, against Long Beach Unified School District, Mark Anthony Santo and his wife Jennifer Santo, herself an LBUSD teacher. They attended Lindbergh and/or Jordan, the complaint says, and one of them met him through his wife's classroom at Rogers Middle School. What the complaint alleges against the district, in its own words: that it "ignored and concealed the sexual abuse of plaintiffs and others by Mark Santo that had already occurred." Its list of red flags is the one the district's own file shows it had: a 2013 written reprimand at Lindbergh over how he was messaging girls on Instagram, followed by a high-school classroom and the athletic department, followed in 2018 by a resignation agreement under which the district promised to tell an employer of adults nothing about the allegations at all. The district's answer, when asked about the suit? It doesn't comment on pending litigation. It has admitted none of this, and as of this writing the public docket shows no ruling, no trial date and no settlement. Docket.

May 2 and July 9, 2025

Upheld. Three justices of the Second District Court of Appeal left every conviction standing and vacated only the two assault counts, duplicates of the more serious ones. The panel also wrote that the uncharged acts the jury heard about involved two more students, from Jordan High, where he'd taught for nearly four years. On July 9 the California Supreme Court declined to review, so 80 years to life it stays. He is in state prison. Long Beach Post.

July 28 and December 2, 2025

Cabrillo High this time. Gabriel Vigil, 34, was the school's head baseball coach and a substitute groundskeeper when another Cabrillo staff member reported on July 1, 2025 that a teenage student had been assaulted off campus. Long Beach police arrested him at his apartment on July 24; the District Attorney charged him on July 28 in case 25LBCF01382 with seven felonies over conduct between May 1 and July 1, 2025, at his apartment and elsewhere, and said there may be more victims. On November 3 he took a plea: no contest to meeting a minor for lewd purposes and sexual penetration of a person under 18, five counts dismissed. On December 2, Long Beach Superior Court sent him to state prison for two years and eight months, with lifetime registration and an order to stay 100 yards from the girl and from Cabrillo. The district said he no longer works there. No civil suit against the district over him is on any public docket we can see. Long Beach Post.

March 18, 2026

The newest complaint reaches back the furthest. She is 35 now, Jane Doe in the papers, and she has sued Long Beach Unified over a Burcham Elementary teacher who, her complaint alleges, groomed her and abused her in a classroom when she was in fifth grade, 1999 to 2001. The district "knew or should have known" he was a danger to children; that's the complaint's phrase, not ours. Her lawyer says she went to the police around 2013, at 22, and nothing came of it. The teacher isn't a defendant. The district, which says it does not tolerate misconduct and is investigating, put him on paid leave the morning after it was served; he is still employed there, at another school, and through his family he calls the allegations unequivocally false. That is all there is so far. A complaint, and a denial. Long Beach Post.

We checked this on September 15, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from March 18, 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 Long Beach Unified School District lawsuit

The district. Not the teacher, or not only. Santo is answering for himself, 80 years of it, and Vigil is serving his; neither is who the families sued. They sued the Long Beach Unified School District, the public body that hired these men, put them in a classroom or a dugout, and, the complaints allege, was told and kept them there. That is the theory in every case above: a teacher answers for what he did; a district that put a written warning in his file in 2013, then gave him a high school and the athletic department, then let him resign under a deal that kept the allegations from his next employer, answers for the students in between. That is what the seven plaintiffs say. The district has admitted none of it, and no court has found that it knew.

Long Beach Unified is a public school district of the State of California, 83 schools and more than 61,000 students across Long Beach, Lakewood, Signal Hill and Avalon, and that changes two things a lawyer will walk you through. There is no cap on what a jury can award against it for what was actually done to you. And you do not file a government claim first, whatever year it was; childhood sexual abuse claims go straight to court.

Two of these schools already have pages of their own. Jordan High, where the criminal case is told in full, and Lindbergh Middle School, where the 2012-13 count happened. If yours is one of them, read that page too. The questions are the same either way, and the defendant is the same.

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 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, whichever school and whichever year. Santo's students were born around 1996 to 2004; a fifth-grader at Burcham in 2000 turns 40 around 2030.

Because the district is a public body there is one more rule, and here it helps you. You do not have to file a government claim with Long Beach Unified 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 hasn't mattered which year it was since 2020. Born before 1987, the fortieth birthday has come or is close, and what remains is the discovery rule plus a showing that the district knew or should have known, with the certificates the statute asks for. Whether that showing can be made on your facts is a lawyer's call, not ours. We won't pretend otherwise.

And if it happened on or after January 1, 2024, there's no deadline at all; that is Code of Civil Procedure 340.1, and the Cabrillo case falls entirely inside it. So, plainly: if you were at a Long Beach Unified school any time from the mid-1990s on, you almost certainly still have time. What doesn't keep is the rest of it. The messages. Which parent went to the office. What the file said. That is the part worth one call now.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told a soul. Not a parent, not a teammate, nobody. The young women in the Santo trial carried it for years first; the Burcham plaintiff waited until 35.
You liked him. He was the teacher who noticed you, the one who called you his daughter. The prosecutor told Santo's jury that was the method.
It happened at his house, at his apartment, in a car, not on campus. The Cabrillo conduct was at his apartment. Two of the three in the Santo case said the same.
You went to the police once, years back, and it went nowhere. The Burcham plaintiff says exactly that, through her lawyer, about 2013. A police file that went nowhere is not a claim. Nobody filed anything for you.
You figure the seven who sued got everyone's share. They filed for themselves. And the Jackie Robinson case settled for one person, on her facts.
You live in Arizona, Nevada, anywhere now. The case is a California case wherever you are, and the firm we work with handles them wherever you live.

Schools covered

Jordan High School, 6500 Atlantic Avenue in North Long Beach, which has its own page at /jordan-high-school-survivors. Lindbergh Middle School, now Lindbergh STEM Academy, also with its own page, /lindbergh-middle-school-survivors. Rogers Middle School, which the seven-plaintiff complaint names. Jackie Robinson Academy on Pine Avenue. Cabrillo High School on the west side. Burcham Elementary in East Long Beach. And every other campus the district runs, 83 of them, in Long Beach, Lakewood, Signal Hill and Avalon on Catalina Island. A different district next door, Paramount, Bellflower, ABC, Compton? The questions still work. Answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue Long Beach Unified School District for sexual abuse by a teacher?

Former students have, three times in the last five years that we can find on a docket, and one of those cases settled before trial. Whether you can depends mostly on when you were born and when it happened, which is what the questions above sort out. Which school matters less than you'd think: the defendant is the same.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

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

Was Mark Santo convicted?

Yes, by a Long Beach jury on June 5, 2023, and the record above lists every count. Eighty years to life followed in October. He appealed and lost in May 2025, and the state Supreme Court said no that July. The seven women's civil case against the district is a separate matter, filed in December 2023 and still pending.

Don't I have to file a claim with the school district before I can sue?

No. California took that step out for childhood sexual abuse claims against public entities, and since 2020 it hasn't mattered which year the abuse happened. Your case goes to court, not to a claims office.

It was the 1990s for me, so is it too late?

Maybe not. California's clock runs to your 40th birthday, or five years past the day you connected the dots if that comes later, so anyone born in 1987 or after is inside on age alone. Past 40, it turns on the discovery rule and what the district knew, and a lawyer has to weigh that. The Burcham complaint filed this year describes 1999 to 2001. One call sorts it.

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.