What the Sun Prairie West dean did, and what the district was told.

West opened in the fall of 2022, so it's a young school. Its dean of students is in federal prison now, 18 years, handed down in April, and people at the district, the record says, were told about him in the spring of 2023 and then again in April 2025. If your kid was a student at West in those years, or you were, this is about you.

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

This applies to you no matter what

You're a parent, and your kid hasn't said much. Most of what is in the record came out from other students, a tip line and a phone, not from anyone volunteering it. Reach out anyway. The Guardian option in the questions above is built for exactly you.
Somebody told the school and nothing happened. That's the spine of this whole record. Two people complained in the spring of 2023, the prosecutors say; a third sent a tip in April 2025; and the district's own outside investigator found staff never opened the Title IX process, not the first time and not the second.
It wasn't him, it was somebody else on staff. The charges against the former principal describe a second West staff member, accused of touching a student, whose conduct prosecutors say was not reported either. The school, not one man, is the question here.
Your child was in a photo they never knew about. The criminal complaint describes 195 images taken without the subjects' knowledge, many pulled from the school's own surveillance cameras. Those students have never been counted.
It's still fresh, or still going on. Nothing here has to be years old to count; the clocks in the deadline section start on dates in 2023, 2024 and 2025, which is to say practically yesterday.
Your kid's 18 already, maybe 19, and you don't know if that matters; read the deadline section, because it does. For the claim against the district it is the birthday, not the school year, that a lawyer will ask about first.

Sun Prairie West High School: what the public record says, and when

We didn't write what's below. Federal prosecutors did, and two courts, and the district's own outside investigator, and the reporters who covered them, and we link to every one of them. We don't add to it. Where a line says charged or alleged, that is exactly what it means, and no more.

July 2025

This is the month Sun Prairie police arrested Robert Gilkey-Meisegeier, until recently the school's dean of students, and Dane County charged him with possessing child pornography (13 counts) and child sexual exploitation (2 counts), cash bond $75,000. What the complaint laid out was this. Rumors about him and one student had gone around the student body in the 2023-24 school year, and nobody investigated, because students wouldn't substantiate them. A tip in March or April 2025 said he was grooming a student; HR looked, kept no file, and told neither police nor Dane County Human Services. And there were 195 photos, taken without the subjects knowing, many of them pulled off the school's own surveillance cameras. Fox 47, criminal complaint.

August 27, 2025

A federal grand jury in Madison indicted him for producing, attempting to produce and possessing child pornography (United States v. Gilkey-Meisegeier, W.D. Wis. No. 3:25-cr-00088). Two dates in it worth noticing, because they come so late: the production count is May 16, 2025, the possession count June 1. WKOW.

January 6, 2026

The school board released the independent investigation it had ordered from attorney Samuel C. Hall Jr. Rumors of an inappropriate relationship between the dean and a student went around during the 2023-24 school year, he found, and nobody took formal action; the April 2025 tip, when it came, got an insufficient response. Then, in his own words, "school-level and district-level administrators failed to recognize Title IX obligations, which I believe resulted in insufficient investigations into serious allegations." The principal and the director of school operations did not return to the district. WKOW, independent report.

January 2026

Dane County's district attorney charged the former West principal, Jennifer Ploeger, with three misdemeanor counts of failing to report child abuse or neglect. Two of the counts concern the dean; the third concerns a different West staff member, accused of touching a student, whose conduct prosecutors say also went unreported. Police had referred the HR director as well; the DA declined to charge him. Charges, not findings, and her lawyer called them unjust. Cap Times.

February 6, 2026

Gilkey-Meisegeier pleaded guilty in federal court, though not to all three counts. One: producing child pornography. The attempt and possession counts went away under the plea agreement, which also fixed the range at 15 to 18 years. WKOW.

April 28, 2026

Judge William M. Conley gave him 18 years in federal prison. After that, 25 years of supervised release, and a $10,000 assessment. The judge described an ongoing pattern of grooming students, sexual contact at school included. But the reason this entry matters most to a parent is the U.S. Attorney's release from that day, which is where the knowledge facts on this page come from. It says the district had him from July 2022, first as a youth advocate; that in the spring of 2023 two people complained to district personnel about his behavior toward students; that he was made dean anyway, in August 2024; that an anonymous tip in April 2025 said he was in an inappropriate relationship with a student; and that he was fired June 9, 2025. U.S. Attorney, W.D. Wis..

June 1, 2026

Dane County prosecutors asked that the 15 state counts be dismissed, since the federal conviction rested on the same conduct, and a judge granted it. The one that stands, then, is the federal conviction. Channel 3000.

June 25, 2026

Ploeger's plea in Dane County Circuit Court was no contest, to one misdemeanor count of failing to report, with the other two counts dismissed. She went into a deferred prosecution agreement: complete its terms, and that last count goes away too. No jail. That is where her case stands today. Channel 3000.

We checked this on September 12, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from June 25, 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 Sun Prairie West High School lawsuit

The Sun Prairie Area School District. That is the point of a page like this. The man who did it answers for himself; he's doing that for 18 years. A public school district is a different thing. This one was told in the spring of 2023, promoted him to dean in August 2024 anyway, was told again in April 2025, and still kept him in the building until June, and it's that stretch of time it answers for. The theory, put plainly: the district knew enough to act and did not, and a student was hurt in the gap. The 2023 and 2025 complaints aren't our claim, either; the federal prosecutors wrote them into their sentencing release themselves. The district's own investigator wrote that its administrators never recognized their Title IX obligations. Those are the two documents a lawyer starts from.

A school district in Wisconsin is a public body, and that changes the shape of the case in ways a lawyer walks you through. There is a notice step for claims against a school district that a lawyer handles, early, and there are federal claims available against a public school that do not exist against a private one. The lawyers we work with build these cases around the federal claims. None of that is your job to sort out. Your job is the questions above.

The individuals are defendants too where it fits: the dean, and possibly the administrators the report names. Their criminal cases, finished or deferred, don't have to finish anything for a civil case to start.

Your deadline: the Wisconsin statute of limitations for abuse at a public school

Two clocks, and the shorter one is the one that matters. Against the person who did it, Wisconsin gives a long time: for the listed child sexual assault and exploitation offences, a civil action can be filed any time before the injured person turns 35 (Wis. Stat. 893.587). Against the school district, it is a different and much shorter clock. In 2023 the Wisconsin Supreme Court held, in Fleming v. Amateur Athletic Union, that a negligent-supervision claim against the organization is not covered by 893.587 at all. It runs on the ordinary three-year injury period (893.54), paused while the person is a minor and for two years after (893.16). In practice: roughly to the 20th birthday. So when a lawyer asks for a birthday before asking which school year, that's why.

Where it gets tight is for someone who was already 18 when it happened, because there's no pause at all then, just three years from the event, and three years from the fall of 2023 lands right about now. A kid who was under 18 at West in 2023-24 or 2024-25 is in better shape; that 20th birthday most likely hasn't come. Which is the reason the questions ask whether the person was under 18 at the time. If the answer is no, the arithmetic changes, and a lawyer has to do it from the actual dates.

One more thing, plainly. Wisconsin has not opened a revival window for old claims, and there is no talk of one that we would repeat. The federal claims a lawyer would look at against a public school district have clocks of their own; the lawyers we work with treat the short state clock as the deadline for all of it, and so should you. A lawyer decides. The call is how you find out where you stand.

Your situation still qualifies even if

Your kid says it was nothing. Most of the students in this record said the same thing, to each other, for two school years.
Nobody from the district ever called you. The record suggests that is the norm here, not the exception.
You reported it and were told it was a rumor. A student was suspended for talking about the same rumor. That is in the public record.
You liked him, or your kid did. Judge Conley called what he did grooming, and that is what grooming looks like from the inside. It has no bearing on any of this.
You've moved, or your child has graduated. The address you live at now does not change a Wisconsin claim.
You're not sure it counts, so you've been ruling it out on your own. Don't; that is a lawyer's call to make. A photo off a camera you never saw counts. Messages count.

Schools covered

Sun Prairie West High School, 2850 Ironwood Drive, Sun Prairie, fall of 2022 on. Other Sun Prairie Area School District schools and other Dane County districts too; say where.

Questions people are asking

Can a parent sue the Sun Prairie school district over what the dean did?

A parent can, and so can a former student, and most of what a lawyer would rely on is already sitting in public: a federal conviction naming the school, a sentencing release saying the district received complaints in 2023 and again in April 2025, and the district's own outside report on how it handled them. Whether a particular case is worth bringing depends on what happened and when, which is what the questions on this page sort out.

So what did the dean actually get convicted of?

One thing, producing child pornography, in the Western District of Wisconsin, and it was a guilty plea rather than a trial. Judge Conley gave him 18 years, plus 25 years of supervised release once he's out. He'd been charged with more than that, two other federal counts and 15 in Dane County, but all of it was dropped once the one conviction covered the same conduct. It's in the record above, dates and links included.

And Ploeger, the principal, where did her case land?

Not in a cell, put it that way. Three misdemeanors, January 2026, failing to report child abuse or neglect; that was the charge. In June she pleaded no contest to a single one of them. What happened to the rest is the part people miss: two were dismissed right there at the plea, and the one she admitted to gets dismissed as well, later, if she finishes a deferred prosecution agreement. Not a felony, no jail, and she's no longer with the district. None of that settles what the district itself answers for, which is a civil question and a different one.

My kid's already 18. Is it too late?

Probably not, but this is the one place in Wisconsin law where the clock is short. For a claim against the school district the Supreme Court's Fleming decision puts it at roughly the 20th birthday. For a claim against the individual it runs to 35. A lawyer has to look at the actual dates; that is a ten-minute conversation, and it is free.

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 WI attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

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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.