What happened to you at Thacher was not okay.

Thacher is the boarding school in the hills above Ojai where every freshman gets a horse. In June 2021 its board put a 91-page report by outside lawyers on the school's own website, naming six former faculty and administrators, and wrote that the school "failed to properly protect its students and alumni." A 1996 graduate sued the school in Ventura County the next year over a soccer coach it had hired knowing what he'd done at his last school; a second former student sued over the headmaster himself. If you were a Thacher student, or came back as a young alum, and something happened there that you have never quite said out loud, keep reading. 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

The name you're looking for is nowhere in either report, not among the six in 2021 or the eight in 2023, and you've read both twice to be sure. Fine. The lawyers wrote, in their own report, that it "is not an exhaustive recounting of every report" they received; they named who they could corroborate, and that is a much shorter list than everyone.
You had already graduated. The report counts recent alumni right through the five-year reunion, and two of the accounts about the soccer coach are reunion accounts. Being nineteen and back on campus for a weekend does not put you outside this.
You told a teacher, a dorm head, the head of school, and the person kept working. The report describes exactly that, more than once, and in California a school that covered up what it knew can be made to pay three times what a jury awards.
It happened in the eighties or the nineties, long enough ago that you stopped counting. So did almost everything in the record below. California's deadline for anyone abused as a minor runs to age 40, or five years from the day you understood what it did to you, and the 2021 report is the day a lot of Thacher alumni understood.
You already talked to the Munger Tolles lawyers, or to the sheriff's detectives, and were told it was too old for a criminal case. It probably was. The civil deadline is a different deadline, and that is the one this page is about.
You aren't the one it happened to. You're the parent, or the spouse, or the roommate from sophomore year who has watched a friend not talk about it for thirty years. Call anyway, or fill in the form, and we'll talk to you before we ever talk to them.

The Thacher record: the report, the suits, the investigation, and when

We didn't write what's below. Thacher's own board, the lawyers it hired, the Ventura County courts, the sheriff and the reporters who covered it did, and we link to every one of them. We don't add to it. The two civil complaints are allegations; the school has admitted nothing in either case, and nothing here decides them.

June 16, 2021

The 91-page report from Munger, Tolles & Olson, the firm Thacher's board had hired in August 2020, was built on interviews with more than 120 people, and it names six former faculty and administrators. On John Friborg, the girls' and boys' soccer coach and college counselor from 1987 to 1997, it found firsthand reports of misconduct involving four then-current students and two recent graduates, and that the headmaster who hired him knew he had been asked to leave his last school over a relationship with a student. Munger, Tolles & Olson report, June 2021 (PDF).

June 16, 2021

That same day the Board of Trustees put out its own conclusions, and three lines of them are worth quoting whole: "The School failed to properly protect its students and alumni"; some students "were shamed, silenced, and not heard"; and the school "failed to prioritize the well-being of students when it hired individuals alleged to have engaged in sexual misconduct." Board of Trustees conclusions (PDF).

October 12, 2022

Jane Doe's complaint, and she is a former student suing under that name: headmaster Bill Wyman, who ran Thacher from 1975 to 1992 and died in 2014, groped her and made sexual remarks in 1982, she says, when she was 13, and the school, once she'd complained, told her not to come back. Los Angeles Times, via AOL.

November 15, 2022

Jennifer Christiansen Vurno, class of 1996, and this time under her own name: her amended complaint against The Thacher School, Ventura County Superior Court case 56-2022-00569736-CU-MC-VTA, first filed under a Doe caption on August 26. Seven causes of action, negligent hiring and negligent supervision and retention among them, plus failure to report suspected child abuse; the story underneath is that Friborg abused her on campus in the spring of 1996, she alleges, and that the school which hired him in 1987 already knew what had happened at the Governor's Academy. Ojai Valley News, with the complaint.

December 28, 2022

The Ventura County Sheriff and District Attorney closed their 18-month criminal review. Detectives had identified roughly 100 potential cases going back to the 1960s; three were sent to prosecutors and all three were declined because the criminal statute of limitations had run. No former teacher or administrator was charged. Sheriff and DA joint release.

January 24, 2023

Thacher filed its answer to the Vurno complaint. The case sits in Department 42 before Judge Henry J. Walsh. Ventura County docket, via Trellis.

February 13, 2023

The school released Munger Tolles's 170-page supplemental report, the one law enforcement had asked it to hold back. This one names eight former faculty, staff and administrators, and the board's letter that came with it carries an apology in the board's own words: "we failed our survivors, and we apologize, sincerely and unequivocally." Santa Barbara Independent.

June 2024

In the Jane Doe case a superior court ordered Thacher to hand over the investigation records tied to her claims. The school and Munger Tolles fought that order to the California Supreme Court, filing a petition for review on June 7, 2024. Both suits were still being litigated. Bloomberg Law.

We checked this on September 12, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from June 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 Thacher School lawsuit

The school. Not the man, or not only the man. The Thacher School is a California nonprofit corporation with a campus, an endowment and insurance, and the two suits are aimed at it, for the same reason the report is hard to read: it says the adults in charge were told. The 1987 hire was made, the report found, by a headmaster who knew the coach had been asked to leave Massachusetts over a student. A colleague later told the head of school the coach's time alone with one girl "did not look right." That girl and her father spoke to him during her senior year. In June 1997 three former students sat in his office together, the coach admitted at least one of the accounts was true, and he was asked to resign. The lawyers found no record that anyone at the school ever reported him to the police, and he went on to run another school.

That is what a negligence case against a school is made of, and Ms. Vurno's complaint pleads it almost line for line: negligent hiring, negligent supervision, negligent retention, and a mandated reporter's duty to report that the complaint says was never met. Under California law, if a jury finds an institution covered up what it knew about a child, it can triple the award. Nobody can promise that. A lawyer can tell you whether your years and your dorm put you inside it.

Who actually pays is the fair question about any school, and the answer here is simpler than it is for a public district: a private school with its own money and its own insurers, and no government cap on what a jury can award.

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

Until you turn 40, or five years from the day you understood what it did to you, whichever is later. That is Code of Civil Procedure 340.1, and it is the reason we ask your birth year. Born in 1987 or later and the door is open on age alone. Born earlier, and it turns on discovery, which is a conversation and not a date, though for a lot of Thacher alumni the conversation starts with a June 2021 email from the school with a report attached.

Anything after the start of 2024 has no deadline at all, the legislature took it off the books, but almost nothing on this page is that recent. Most of it is old, and old is what the revival window was for: Ms. Vurno, class of 1996, got in under one, a three-year window that closed on December 31, 2022. It isn't coming back. The two routes above, though, are open, and don't care that Thacher is private, or that it was the 1990s, or that the sheriff said it was too old to prosecute. One call settles which route is yours.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never told a soul. Thacher was small and everyone lived on campus and he was everyone's favorite.
You were a teenager and it felt like a relationship. Grooming is built to feel exactly like that, and the report uses the word on purpose.
You're a man and figure this page is about the girls' soccer team. Friborg coached both teams and ran the sophomore boys' dorm, and the questions work the same.
You still love the place. You go to reunions, you gave to the annual fund. That doesn't cancel anything; some of the people in the report did too.
You told the Munger Tolles lawyers already and think that was your turn. It wasn't. That was the school's investigation, not yours.
You live in another state now. Most Thacher alumni do, by the time they're ready.

Facilities covered

The Thacher School campus at 5025 Thacher Road in Ojai: the dorms, the barns and the horse program, the soccer fields, faculty houses on campus, the infirmary, camping trips and the Golden Trout camp, and reunion weekends back on campus as a recent graduate. A different boarding school in Ventura or Santa Barbara County? The questions still work. Answer them and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue the Thacher School?

Two former students already have, one over a coach, one over the headmaster, and both cases are in Ventura County. Whether you can depends mostly on when you were born and when it happened, which is what the questions above sort out. It does not depend on whether you are one of the people in the report.

What did the Thacher School report find?

The June 2021 report named six former faculty and administrators and described the school hiring a coach it knew had been sent away from his last school, then failing to act when students and a colleague raised concerns about him. The board's own conclusion, in its own words, was that the school "failed to properly protect its students and alumni." A second report in February 2023 named eight.

Was anyone at Thacher arrested or charged?

No former teacher or administrator was. The Ventura County Sheriff and District Attorney reviewed about 100 potential cases and closed the file in December 2022 because the criminal deadlines had run. That's the criminal side, and it's closed. The civil side runs on its own clock, and for a lot of people that clock hasn't run out.

Do I need a particular kind of lawyer?

A civil lawyer who sues schools for institutional sexual abuse, not only the person who did it. That is the only kind we work with, and the firm we work with takes California cases wherever you live now.

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.