What happened to you at Taft Elementary was not okay.

Mission Grove Parkway North, Riverside, the Riverside Unified elementary on it, and the fourth-grade room that from 1997 to 2002 belonged to a teacher who coached youth soccer on the side: one of his fourth-graders remembered him. In September 2021, at 32, he went to the Riverside police and told them that teacher had sexually abused him back in fourth grade, most of it away from school, some of it on campus. What came next: 14 felony counts, $5 million bail, a not-guilty plea on December 3, 2021, and then, for close to five years, nothing that anyone has reported. So if you were in that classroom, or on one of his teams, or just in that building in those years, we think this page is about you. Keep reading, please.

WatchingSeptember 2026: the criminal case against the former Taft fourth-grade teacher, filed in Riverside County Superior Court in November 2021, has had no public update since his December 3, 2021 arraignment, and we are checking the docket. No civil complaint naming Riverside Unified over Taft has been reported. The questions below still work.

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

Looking for the page about the whole district? Riverside Unified School District survivors: Liberty, Chemawa, North, Poly and Taft on one page, with the district's full record and its settlements.

This applies to you no matter what

You never went to the police. One man did, in September 2021, more than twenty years after fourth grade, and the day they arrested the teacher the police said they believe there are others who have not come forward yet. That sentence was written for you.
It didn't happen in a classroom. The police said most of what was reported happened away from school. A soccer field, a car, somebody's house. Where it happened matters less than who he was to you and how he got there, and a lawyer sorts out the rest.
You weren't in his class. A soccer team he coached, another grade, a kid who hung around after the bell. The charges are about one boy. A page about a school never is.
What happened to you was less than what is in the charging language, or you honestly don't have a word for it. You were nine, ten. Nobody expects the adult to have found the words since.
You're 35, and it feels like somebody else's life, and California still gives a person hurt as a child until their 40th birthday, so for a Taft fourth-grader from 1999 that is a few years off yet. And if you're reading this for somebody else, a brother, a friend, a husband, that counts too.

The Taft Elementary record: the report, the arrest, the charges, the arraignment, and where it stands

None of this is ours. The Riverside Police Department wrote most of it, and City News Service, and the reporters who were in the Riverside Hall of Justice on December 3, 2021, and we link every line. One thing to be exact about before you read on: the teacher has been charged. He pleaded not guilty. No court has convicted him of anything on this record, and until one does, every sentence below is an accusation and is written as one. The district's wider record, Liberty Elementary, Chemawa Middle, North High and Poly High, is on the Riverside Unified page, not here.

1997 to 2002

Paul Edward Lowe taught fourth grade at Taft Elementary for those five school years, according to Riverside police, and coached youth soccer, for AYSO in Los Angeles County and in Big Bear. Before Taft he had taught two years at a private school in Hacienda Heights in the early 1990s, worked at a YMCA and at youth camps, and he wrote children's books under the pen name Edric Phoenix. He left Taft in 2002, police said, after an arrest and conviction in Los Angeles County for sexually assaulting a minor, one that required him to register as a sex offender. That earlier case is described here only as the police described it. We have not read its file. CBS Los Angeles.

September 2021

September 2021. A man, 32, went to the Riverside Police Department's sexual assault and child abuse unit and reported his fourth-grade teacher, from twenty-some years before. Detective Stacie Ontko took it. The school, every report says, was Taft. KTLA.

November 9, 2021

Lowe was 61 by then, living in Corona, when Riverside police arrested him, November 9, 2021, and booked him at the Robert Presley Detention Center, 14 counts of sexual assault of a child, bail $5 million, and it would stay there. The department's release put it this way: the man "reported he had been sexually abused by his 4th grade teacher over 20 years ago while attending a local school in Riverside," and then, in the department's own words, "Most of these sexual assaults occurred away from school, but there were some occasions when the abuse took place on campus." One more line in that release, and honestly it's why this page exists: police said they believed he may have more victims who hadn't come forward yet, and they put the detective's phone number in the release for anyone who wanted to talk. Fox News.

November 17, 2021

City News Service broke the 14 counts down when the charges were reported. Eight felony counts of aggravated sexual assault on a child. Three more, felony counts of aggravated sexual assault on a minor with force. And three felony counts of aggravated sexual assault on a child under 14. Charges. Not findings. KNX News.

December 3, 2021

Arraignment, before Judge David Gunn at the Riverside Hall of Justice, where Lowe pleaded not guilty to all 14 counts. Bail didn't move ($5 million), he didn't either (the Presley jail), and Judge Gunn set a felony settlement conference for February 23, 2022. And that, as far as anyone has printed, is where it stops. Patch / City News Service.

November 17, 2022, and since

A year on, City News Service ran the story again as a one-year-ago item. Nothing new to add. No plea, no trial date, no sentence, no dismissal. September 2026 update: we have found nothing since, either, in the news or from the District Attorney, and no civil complaint naming Riverside Unified over Taft. The Riverside County Superior Court docket is what will answer the question, and we are checking it. If the charges are dismissed or he is acquitted, this page comes down within 72 hours. If he pleads or is convicted, this page will say so, exactly. MyNewsLA / City News Service.

We checked this on September 15, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from November 17, 2022, and since. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a Taft Elementary lawsuit

A Taft case gets brought against Riverside Unified. Not the school. The district, meaning the public body that hired a fourth-grade teacher in 1997 and had him in front of a room of nine-year-olds, year after year, until 2002. The theory is not complicated. A teacher answers for what he did. A district answers for what it knew, or should have known, and for what it did or didn't do about it. Here is the honest part, though. Nobody has filed that case over Taft yet, not that we have found, and no one has said, in any court, what Taft's principal or the district office knew about him in 1999. We are not going to guess. A complaint would have to plead it, and a lawyer would have to find it.

The district is a public entity, and that changes three things a lawyer will walk you through. You do not file a government claim with Riverside Unified first, whatever year it was; childhood sexual abuse claims go straight to court. There are no punitive damages against a school district in California, ever; that is Government Code 818. And there is no cap on what a jury can award for what was actually done to a child at a public school. It is also a district that has paid on claims like this before: $6.2 million in 2018 and $13.7 million in 2022 to former Liberty Elementary students over an after-school aide. Those were their cases, not yours, and the district admitted nothing. The whole district record, Liberty, Chemawa, North, Poly, is on the Riverside Unified page.

The teacher himself can be sued too, and usually is, in the same complaint. And a civil case does not have to wait for his criminal case to finish. It has been sitting since 2021. Yours doesn't have to.

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 the reason we ask whether you were born in 1987 or later. If you were, the door is open on age alone.

Because Riverside 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 since 2020 it no longer matters which year it was. What matters is your age. Born before 1987, and your 40th 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: anything on or after January 1, 2024 has no deadline at all, under section 340.1.

So, plainly. Taft, 1997 to 2002, anywhere in that building or on one of his teams: you almost certainly still have time, years of it for most of you, though not the decades a younger kid would have. The oldest of you, the 1997 class, hit 40 in 2027; the rest of the arithmetic is in the questions at the bottom. What doesn't keep is the rest. Who else was on the team. Which parent went to the office. What the principal's name was. That is the part worth one call now.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told a soul. One person did, twenty-some years later, and the police went looking for the rest of you. Silence for that long was a perfectly reasonable thing for a nine-year-old to do.
You liked him. He was the teacher who coached soccer, the one who wrote kids' books, and a lot of kids did. That is part of how it worked, and it is not a mark against you.
It never went as far as what is in the charging language, and you figure that means it doesn't count.
Maybe you told a parent, or a parent went down to the office, and nothing came of it. That's not a reason to stay quiet, if it happened. It is the center of a case against a district.
The criminal case never went anywhere that you heard of. Neither have we, since 2021. A civil claim is a different door and yours doesn't need his to close first.
You live somewhere else now. Half of Riverside's class of whatever-year does, and the firm we work with handles California cases wherever you are.

Schools covered

One school, and it's William Howard Taft Elementary at 959 Mission Grove Parkway North, Riverside, California 92506. Kindergarten through sixth, about 635 kids these days, a Riverside Unified school then and now. The classroom, the yard, the field trips, anything that ran under Taft's name, and the youth soccer teams the fourth-grade teacher coached, on campus or off. 1997 to 2002 for the teacher in the record; any year for anyone else. A different Riverside Unified school, Liberty, Chemawa, North, Poly, or one of the forty-odd others? The district has a page of its own at /riverside-unified-survivors, and the questions there work the same way. Answer them, and say where.

Questions people are asking

Has the Taft Elementary teacher actually been convicted of anything?

No. Not that anyone has reported, and we've looked, through September 2026; the record above stops at his not-guilty plea on December 3, 2021, with no plea deal, trial, sentence or dismissal after it that we can find, and we're checking the Riverside County Superior Court docket ourselves. Police did say he had an earlier conviction in Los Angeles County for sexually assaulting a minor, the one that ended his time at Taft in 2002. That's the police's account, and we repeat it only as theirs.

Can I sue Riverside Unified over what happened at Taft Elementary?

Nobody has yet, that we have found. Former students at four other Riverside Unified schools have, and the district settled the Liberty Elementary cases for $6.2 million and $13.7 million rather than take them to a jury. Whether you can comes down mostly to when you were born, which the questions above sort out, and if you were born in 1987 or later the honest answer is yes, very likely. Born earlier, a lawyer has to look at the discovery rule and what the district knew.

Do I have to wait until his criminal case is over?

No. A criminal case decides what happens to him. A civil case is a different question, what the school district owes the children it put in his classroom, and it gets filed while his case is still sitting there all the time. Lawyers do that routinely, and more often than not one case ends up helping the other.

What 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 the review. Not the case, either.

It was 1999, though. Surely that's too late?

Almost certainly not, no. A fourth-grader in 1999 was born around 1989 and turns 40 around 2029, and California's clock for someone hurt as a child runs to the 40th birthday, or five years from understanding the harm, whichever is later. There is no government claim to file first with the district. The ones closest to the line are the oldest Taft pupils, from his first year, born around 1987. For them the line is 2027, so write that down; his 2002 class, born around 1992, has years more.

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.