What happened to you at Sycamore Junior High was not okay.

Sycamore Junior High, on East Sycamore Street in Anaheim. One drama teacher, thirty-two years on that campus, and a criminal case that ended without a verdict because he died on the morning of closing arguments. Twenty-five former students have since sued the district that employed him. If you were a student there from 2009 on and an adult at that school did something to you, 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 were never part of the criminal case. Six boys is what a prosecutor could bring to a courtroom, and one of them dropped out before trial. Nobody has ever said that was everyone.
The teacher is dead and there was no verdict. That closed the criminal file. It closed nothing for the district, which is the defendant the twenty-five former students sued in 2024.
Maybe it wasn't him but some other adult on that campus, or maybe it came years after 2011. A school answers for its staff, not for one man.
You told somebody at the school and nothing happened. So did a maintenance worker, the 2024 complaint says, twice, and nothing formal came of that either.
Your Sycamore years were 2009 to 2011, give or take, seventh and eighth grade. The last of the boys in the criminal case was there in those exact years too, and your deadline, if you want to call it that, sits somewhere near your fortieth birthday.
You're a parent, a brother, a friend asking for someone who can't. Reach out anyway.

The Sycamore Junior High record: the arrest, the charges, the trial that never got a verdict, the lawsuits, and when

We didn't write what's below. The Anaheim police, the Orange County District Attorney, the lawyers who filed suit and the reporters who covered them did, and we link to every one. Where it says charged, it means charged, not convicted; there was no verdict. Where it says a complaint alleges, that is all it is until a court says otherwise.

September 9, 2015

Two former students had come forward. On the ninth, Anaheim police showed up at David Michael Bruce's house and took him in, a man of 65, a couple of years past his last day in a Sycamore classroom. The suspicion: two counts of child molestation, one count of possessing child pornography. Police asked whether there were others. NBC Los Angeles.

October 2, 2015

The Orange County District Attorney charged him with nine felony counts of lewd acts on a child under 14 and two counts of lewd acts on a child of 14 or 15, involving six boys, with the conduct dated from August 1, 1996 to June 30, 2011. He had been re-arrested on September 30 on a $1 million warrant after more former students came forward. NBC Los Angeles.

October 2, 2015

The first civil suit was filed in Orange County Superior Court by one of the six, against Bruce and the Anaheim Union High School District. It alleged the two were often alone together, behind closed doors on campus and off it, and that the favoritism happened in front of district faculty and staff. OC Weekly.

September 27, 2018

Trial opened in Santa Ana on ten counts involving five former students, who had attended Sycamore in 1996–98, 1997–2000, 2002–04, 2007–09 and 2009–11. The prosecutor told the jury it started with massages. A custodian, the reporting said, had seen him massaging a student. Three of the five had already sued the district. CBS Los Angeles.

October 10, 2018

Day eleven of the trial. Closing arguments were set for that morning, and Bruce was found dead in his home. Case 15NF2656 was dismissed by the District Attorney that same day. No jury got to decide anything. There is no conviction, and nowhere on this page will you read that there is. Orange County DA.

November 20, 2024

This is the complaint the page keeps coming back to. Twenty-five former students (John Roes 1 through 25 on the filing) sued Anaheim Union High School District in Orange County Superior Court over what they say happened between 1997 and 2010, when they were boys of 12, 13, 14. And they say something else: that a school maintenance employee saw Bruce molesting students on two separate occasions, told school supervisors, and that nothing formal ever came of it. Plaintiffs' announcement.

We checked this on September 12, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from November 20, 2024. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a Sycamore Junior High lawsuit

The district. Anaheim Union High School District ran Sycamore Junior High for every year David Bruce taught there. It's also the defendant in every civil case filed so far; the first, in October 2015, the twenty-five-plaintiff complaint of November 2024, and the ones between. A teacher who abuses a student answers for himself, and this one never will; he died before the jury could say anything. A district that employed him from October 1981, kept him on as a substitute after he retired in 2010, right through 2013, and, the complaint alleges, was told by its own maintenance worker what he was doing and did nothing formal about it, answers on a different theory: it was supposed to be watching. That is negligence, in plain words, and it is what the twenty-five are pleading.

The district is a public body, which changes a few things a lawyer will walk you through. There is a kind of damages California law does not allow against a public body at all, and the lawyer will tell you which. But there is no cap on what a jury can award. And for anything from January 1, 2009 on, there is no government-claim form to file first. That last one is why this page talks about 2009 so much.

One more thing about the twenty-five. Most of them describe years before 2009. Their case is theirs, and whatever happens to it does not decide yours.

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

Until you turn 40. Or, if it comes later, five years from the day you understood what it did to you. California's statute for anyone abused as a minor, Code of Civil Procedure 340.1, says whichever of those is longer. Simple enough.

The district is a public body, so one more date matters. For abuse on or after January 1, 2009, you do not have to file a government claim first (Government Code 905(m)); you go straight to court. Before that date the law treats a school district differently, and the window that once excused the claim step closed at the end of 2022, so a lawyer has to look at your particular facts before anyone can tell you anything, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. After January 1, 2024, there's no deadline of any kind.

So if you were at Sycamore in 2009 or 2010 or 2011, or any year since, you almost certainly have time, and that isn't us being kind. A seventh-grader there in 2009 was born around 1996 and doesn't hit 40 until around 2036; that's why the questions above ask about 1987, and if you were born that year or after, the door is open on age alone. What runs out isn't the calendar. It's who remembers what.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told a soul. Not a spouse, not a brother, nobody. Most of the twenty-five carried it a long time first.
You liked him. He put you in the play, he knew people in Hollywood, or said he did. That is in the prosecutor's opening, not in your imagination.
It never went as far as what was in the charges, and you figure that means it doesn't count.
You got in trouble at school, or after. It has no bearing here.
You live somewhere else now. So does most of the class of 2011, honestly.

Schools covered

Sycamore Junior High School at 1801 East Sycamore Street in Anaheim, plus everything that ran under its name. Drama. Art. The school productions, the field trips, anything off campus where a teacher was the adult in charge. A different Anaheim Union High School District school? The questions still work. Answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue the Anaheim Union High School District over Sycamore Junior High?

Twenty-five former students already have, in November 2024, and three of the boys in the criminal case sued the district before the trial. Whether you can depends mostly on when you were there and when you were born, which is what the questions above sort out. From 2009 on, the answer is usually yes.

Did the Sycamore drama teacher ever get convicted?

No. He was charged with eleven felony counts in 2015 and went to trial on ten of them in September 2018, and then, the morning closing arguments were due, he was found dead. The Orange County DA dismissed the case that day. There was never a verdict, and a civil case against the district doesn't need one.

I was a student at Sycamore back in 2010. Am I too late?

Almost certainly not. You were around thirteen, so you were born around 1997, and California's clock for a minor runs to 40. Because it was after the start of 2009, there's no government claim to file before a lawsuit either.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Here, nothing. Every case is on contingency, so the lawyer is paid only out of what's recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing at all. The call's free. The review's free.

And if my years were the early 2000s, well before 2009?

In the hard part of this page, and we'd rather say so than dodge it. Before 2009, against a public school district, different rules apply, and the window that loosened them for a while closed at the end of 2022. Whether anything survives that isn't our call. It's a lawyer's, and it turns on your facts.

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.