What happened to your child at Robert Semple Elementary was not okay.

East Third Street, Benicia. K through 5, about 480 kids. One fifth-grade room, and the teacher the district put in it in the fall of 2015 had been arrested in Napa back in 2007 and acquitted the year after. He stayed eight school years. February 2024, charges. That April, five of his Semple pupils sued Benicia Unified. And by August 2026 a Solano County jury was hearing the criminal case. If your child sat in that room, keep reading. After-school program, field trip, same thing. Grown now, and it was you, back in 2015 or 2016? Same thing. This is about you.

WatchingSeptember 2026: the former Robert Semple fifth-grade teacher's criminal trial was under way in Solano County Superior Court on August 14, 2026, twelve felony counts of lewd acts with a child under 14, four girls. No verdict had been reported anywhere we could find by mid-September. The lawsuits against the district are pending. When the jury speaks, this line changes. The questions work now.

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

Looking for the page about the whole district? Benicia Unified School District survivors: Robert Semple, Matthew Turner and every other Benicia Unified school on one page, with the district's full record and the same questions.

This applies to you no matter what

Your child simply had him for fifth grade. Any of the eight years, and he had that room from the fall of 2015 until December 2022. The charges happen to be about 2018 through 2022 and the two lawsuits about 2022-23; that doesn't shut out an earlier year at Semple. The questions still work.
Your child told the principal, or a friend did, and nothing seemed to come of it. The first complaint says a classmate reported him in December 2022 and nobody at the school or the district then went looking for other children. The second says one girl told the principal that fall. (The district says an investigator later found the allegations against the principal unsubstantiated. Its finding, not a court's.)
It was smaller than what the charges describe. A hand that stayed. A hug nobody wanted. The complaints describe touching, some of it in his classroom during the after-school program, and a school answers for that too.
Your child is in middle school now and won't talk about it. Nobody's going to make them. You are the one we talk to first, and the deadline runs on their birthday, decades out, not on this year's calendar.
Your child was interviewed by a detective and is not one of the four in the criminal case. One mother in the second lawsuit told the Vallejo Sun her daughter was 'just really scared' of that interview. Being that family is fine.
You were his pupil yourself, in 2015 or 2016, and you're in your early twenties now. This page is for you as much as for any parent.

The Robert Semple record: the charges, the two lawsuits, the trial, and when

None of what follows is ours. The Solano County District Attorney wrote it, and the plaintiffs' lawyers, and two judges, and the reporters who read the court file, and we link to every line. Where a sentence says a complaint alleges something, that is all it is: a claim in a filed lawsuit, not a finding. The teacher has been charged and has not been convicted of anything. And this record is Robert Semple's only. The district's third lawsuit, about a pupil at Matthew Turner Elementary, and the rest of Benicia Unified's record are one sentence at the end and a page of their own.

February 23, 2024

Five felony counts of lewd acts with a child under 14, filed in Solano County against Matthew Joseph Shelton, 42, in a fifth-grade room at Robert Semple since 2015 and a district substitute before that. All five for 2022. Parents learned of it from the Vallejo Sun on March 5; the superintendent's email went out after the story ran and did not name him. The Sun had found something else, too. Back in 2007, teaching third grade at Phillips Edison Elementary in Napa, he'd been arrested over four girls aged eight and nine, and acquitted by a jury in 2008. Did Benicia know that when it hired him? The superintendent, asked, didn't say. What he did say was that it had put him on leave the year before, 'immediately'. Vallejo Sun.

April 9, 2024

The first lawsuit. Jane Doe. Fifth grade, his Semple room, 2022-23. She sued him and Benicia Unified School District in Solano County Superior Court, negligent hiring and supervision. Two accounts of December 2022 sit side by side here. What the district says is that he went on leave on December 21, 2022, that police and Child Protective Services were told and an outside lawyer brought in to look into it; and that when he resigned, on June 2, 2023, he walked into an assistant principal's job at a middle school in West Contra Costa on July 1. Her complaint says a fellow pupil reported him to administrators that December and nobody, school or district, then tried to find out whether there were more children. Some of it, the complaint says, happened in his own classroom, during an after-school program. Her mother told the Sun that finding out about Napa made her sick. Vallejo Sun.

April 24, 2024

Four more. Jane Does 1 through 4, all fifth-graders in his room in 2022-23, filed the second suit in Solano County Superior Court against the district and the teacher, with the same firm, Taylor & Ring. One of the four, the complaint says, told principal Christina Moore that fall that he had touched her inappropriately. It alleges that nobody at the school or the district then made any effort to find other victims, and that after he resigned the principal took steps to see that 'nothing negative' was said about his time at Semple in reference checks. She is not a defendant. The district's response was an outside audit of its hiring and complaint procedures and a committee on field trips. Vallejo Sun.

May 6, 2024

The Semple principal was put on paid leave while the district investigated what the lawsuits said about her. The same story counted it up: seven criminal counts, two girls (the two counts added in March 2024 were for the second girl, 2018 and 2019), and six children in three civil suits. The third suit, filed April 29, isn't a Semple case at all: a six- or seven-year-old at Matthew Turner Elementary, 2019, and a claim that the district let him drive children to field trips alone, in his own car. Two of the counts added in March, the Sun reported, concern that Turner pupil. That suit and the district's wider record live on the Benicia Unified page, not here. Vallejo Sun.

December 5, 2024

He had sued to keep Benicia's and Napa's personnel files on him sealed. Solano County Superior Court Judge Stephen Gizzi ruled against him. By then the charge sheet had grown to 12 counts, four girls. Five counts for one child. Two for another, one for a third, four for the fourth. The preliminary hearing opened in Vallejo that same week, then broke, set to pick up again January 3. Napa Valley Register.

December 13, 2024

The files came out. Among Benicia's: the principal's email of December 21, 2022, telling him to keep his physical contact with pupils to high fives and handshakes. The district said he 'never set foot in a district classroom after that day'. Among Napa's: after the 2008 acquittal the state credentialing commission lifted his suspension and declined to revoke his licence, and he kept it until July 2024, five months after the Benicia charges. The same week the district said an investigator had found the allegations against the principal unsubstantiated. Vallejo Sun.

March 17, 2025

Held to answer on all 12 counts of lewd acts with a child under 14, four girls, after a preliminary hearing that had run on and off since December. Trial was set for October 8, 2025. He was out of custody on a pretrial services contract, and the court had ordered Napa Valley Unified's 2007 records subpoenaed. SFist.

August 14, 2026

On trial. Bay City News reported the case before a Solano County jury, ten months after the first trial date, and that Benicia Unified had moved his wife, a fourth-grade teacher in the district, into an office job after parents objected. As of mid-September we could find no verdict reported anywhere. When there is one, this line changes. Local News Matters.

We checked this on September 15, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from August 14, 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 Robert Semple Elementary lawsuit

Not the school. The district. Robert Semple Elementary can't be sued on its own. It's a campus of Benicia Unified School District, a public corporation, and it's the district that is the defendant in both Semple suits and in the Turner one. The district hired him in 2015 with a 2007 Napa arrest behind him, one the complaints say it should have found. It kept him in a fifth-grade room for eight school years. And it answers for what it knew, and what it did with it. That's the civil case in one line. Negligent hiring. Negligent supervision. And, the complaints say, a December 2022 report that nobody followed to the other children in the room. The teacher answers for himself, in the criminal courtroom, now. The district's answer so far has come through its superintendent, an outside audit and an investigator's finding on the principal. No court has ruled on any of it.

The district has its own page, with the Matthew Turner suit and everything else on the district's name, and the same questions. Because it is a public body, a lawyer will walk you through two things that are different. There are no punitive damages against it, ever. There is also no cap on what a jury can award, and nobody has to file a government claim first; California took that step out of childhood sexual abuse cases whatever the year.

Your family's case does not wait for his verdict and does not need it. It does not need the five Semple families who already filed, either. Each child's facts stand on their own, and a suit that names one classroom in 2022 says nothing about who else was in that room in 2017.

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

Until the child turns 40, or five years from the day they understood what it did to them, 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 the birth year. Anyone born in 1987 or later is in on age alone. And think what that means here: his first Semple fifth-graders, from 2015, were born around 2005, and the four girls in the criminal case and the five in the lawsuits (fifth grade, somewhere between 2018 and 2023) won't see 40 until the late 2040s or early 2050s. Nobody from that room is anywhere close. Put plainly, no child from this school is anywhere near out of time.

Because the district is a public body there is one more rule, and it helps. Normally you would have to file a government claim within months before you could sue a school district. Not with this kind of claim, and not for any year: Government Code section 905(m) and section 340.11(s) of the Code of Civil Procedure take that step off the table. Two footnotes. Anything on or after January 1, 2024 has no deadline at all, under section 340.1. And if the person it happened to was born before 1987, because you were his pupil somewhere else, or someone else's pupil here long ago, the road runs through the discovery rule and what the district knew, and a lawyer decides that on your facts before anyone says anything.

What goes stale is everything else. The class list. The permission slip for the field trip. Which friend your child told at recess, and what the principal wrote back.

Your situation still qualifies even if

Your child never said a word, and you found out from the Vallejo Sun on March 5, 2024, like every other Semple parent.
Your child liked him. Plenty did. That is part of how it works, and it is not held against anyone.
It never went as far as what the counts describe, and you figure that means it doesn't count.
Your child was interviewed by a detective, and then, nothing. A detective's interview isn't a claim; nobody filed anything for your family.
You moved out of Benicia. To Vallejo, to Fairfield, out of state. The firm we work with takes California cases wherever you live now.
You're not sure it was him. It might have been someone else on staff, or the after-school program. Say that, and say where.

Schools covered

A different Benicia Unified school, Matthew Turner, Joe Henderson, Mary Farmar, the middle school or the high school? The district has its own page, /benicia-unified-survivors, with the Turner lawsuit and the district's full record; same defendant, same questions. Answer them and say where. This page covers one school only, the one you know: Robert Semple Elementary on East Third Street (number 2015, Benicia, California 94510), Benicia Unified's K-5 since it opened in 1980, 484 kids on the roll this year, 2025-26, and, for eight school years, his fifth-grade classroom. That room from the fall of 2015 to December 21, 2022 counts. So does the after-school program, a field trip, anything run under the school's name, and any year for anyone else on staff.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue Robert Semple Elementary School?

Not the school itself. You sue Benicia Unified School District, which runs it, and five Semple families already have, in two lawsuits filed in Solano County Superior Court in April 2024. Whether you can depends mostly on the child's birth year and when it happened, which is what the questions above sort out. Nobody has to file a government claim first.

Did the district know about the Benicia teacher before he was charged?

The families say it did, and the record above lays out why. A 2007 arrest in Napa, public, before he was hired in 2015. A classmate's report in December 2022 that, the first complaint says, nobody followed to the other children. A girl who told the principal that fall, the second complaint says. The district's account is that it put him on leave the day of the December 2022 meeting and called the police. No court has ruled on who is right.

Was the Robert Semple teacher convicted?

No. As of mid-September 2026 the Solano County Superior Court jury that has had the case since August hadn't come back; he's charged, and was held to answer on 12 felony counts of lewd acts with a child under 14. Napa's jury, in 2008, acquitted him of six misdemeanor counts. If this trial ends in a verdict, either way, the record above changes that same week.

He hasn't been convicted. Does that matter for a lawsuit?

Not for whether you can bring one. Both Semple suits were filed while the criminal case was at the charging stage. A civil case asks what the district knew and what it did, and it doesn't wait for a jury in the other courtroom. If he is acquitted, a lawyer will tell you honestly what that changes and what it doesn't.

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.