Local investigators wrap Thacher School sexual abuse inquiry with no charges filed

After an 18-month investigation into more than 100 cases of sexual abuse at an exclusive private boarding school in the hills above Ojai, Ventura County law enforcement officials announced this week none would go to court.

Thacher School trustees triggered the investigation in June 2021 when they released an independent, 91-page report on the 133-year-old boarding school's handling of sexual abuse, the linchpin of board efforts to respond to online protests from current and former students.

Ventura County Sheriff's deputies and prosecutors from the Ventura County District Attorney's Office said Wednesday they combed through the report and other records submitted by the school, including an unreleased follow-up report, and flagged 101 potential crimes.

Investigators said they struggled to piece together charges from a list that stretches back almost six decades. Deputy District Attorney Brent Nibecker said that shouldn't minimize Thacher's fraught history.

"Our inability to bring charges should not be seen as endorsing what happened over the years at Thacher," Nibecker said. "Numerous children were victimized. Adults entrusted with their care violated that trust."

Sheriff's Sgt. Ryan Clark said 43 cases ended in an incident report when victims could not be reached or declined to participate. Investigators determined no crime occurred in another 30.

Of the remaining incidents, Clark said 11 were too old to prosecute, and two happened outside the sheriff's jurisdiction. For two incidents, the suspect had passed away and the victims of eight incidents declined to press charges. Two cases had been previously submitted to the district attorney's office.

Clark noted that the statute of limitations for many of the cases would have expired, regardless of the reason for their closure.

Detectives did submit three cases to the district attorney. Those were rejected for being past the statute of limitations, per a joint news release from the sheriff's and district attorney's offices Wednesday afternoon.

Nibecker said prosecutors filed one charge of battery against a Thacher student for an on-campus incident in 2021, but he said the case had not been included in a report by Los Angeles law firm Munger, Tolles and Olson. In October, sheriff's investigators described that case as an alleged felony false imprisonment. On Wednesday, Clark deferred to the District Attorney's office for comment.

The dearth of charges should not deter victims of sexual abuse from reaching out to police, Nibecker said.

"The statute of limitations is so fact-specific," he said. "Just because charges in this case weren't filed doesn't mean it won't happen in another."

The prosecutor said the district attorney's office also looked into just over 50 incidents where they believed school staff may have failed to report child abuse. Nibecker said none of those cases will be prosecuted.

"We ran into some of the same difficulties," he said.

For the "overwhelming majority," Nibecker said the statute of limitations has expired, while in the remainder, investigators found that staff had met their obligation or may not have had knowledge of the incident.

Clark said the school was "receptive" to a shift in its relationship with law enforcement and had agreed to build on the 18-month investigation "so this doesn’t happen again, where we’re kind of left in the dark and bad things are happening.”

“Any future investigations at Thacher will be more victim-centered, more approached in a team environment," the sheriff's sergeant said. "We really didn’t have that relationship prior because these things were just not reported. It was generally not desirable to have a police car on campus."

In a statement emailed Wednesday evening, Carly Rodriguez, a Thacher spokeswoman said the process "allowed Thacher to learn from its past, provide better support for survivors and implement safety enhancements to keep students safe."

Rodriguez wrote that the school was "grateful" to investigators "for the significant time and resources devoted to investigating allegations of sexual misconduct at Thacher."

'One-of-a-kind'

Thacher's reckoning with its history of sexual abuse sparked in June 2020 when a trio of Instagram accounts, including one focused on the school's rape culture, began documenting anonymous stories from current and former students.

The school's board commissioned the Los Angeles law firm to dig into the stories and compile a report on incidents of sexual abuse and the school's handling of them.

More than 10 months and 120 interviews later, the firm published its 91-page report describing incidents from grooming to rape. It also named six faculty and administrators and redacted the names of several others.

Investigators didn't receive a copy of the report until its public release in June 2021, Capt. Eric Buschow said at the time, but Wednesday's news release indicated that the school went on to share more than 1,000 electronic files documenting the law firm's work.

"It's certainly a one-of-a-kind case for me," Nibecker said. "In my career, I’ve never experienced anything like this case where we have a public publishing of a significant number of crimes. We're caught in a position of reverse investigating those cases."

Nibecker noted that the independent investigation may have encouraged some victims to come forward who would have otherwise stayed silent.

"We’re grateful that these victim's stories come to light," he said.

Rodriguez said the school would continue "to cooperate and share information with law enforcement," in an effort to "support law enforcement’s efforts while working toward the release of public reports that provide transparency and accountability for what has occurred at the school."

Investigators asked the school to withhold a second, follow-up report from Munger, Tolles and Olson until they could complete their inquiry. The school complied.

But on Wednesday, Nibecker said that request no longer applied.

"There are no additional crimes currently under investigation," he said. "We have no objection to releasing that second report."

In a pair of emails, Rodriguez said law enforcement had "not yet completed its review of the supplemental report and given the School permission to release it," but that the school "expects to make the supplemental report public once law enforcement’s review is complete."

What's ahead?

Though criminal investigations are wrapped, two victims recently filed civil lawsuits against the school, and more could arise.

In October, attorney Gloria Allred announced that a former student had filed a civil lawsuit against the school, the first of the victims in the report to do so.

The now 53-year-old Jane Doe alleged in a statement that former head William "Bill" Wyman frequently and publicly groped her during her freshman year, so often that school staff began to physically intervene.

The school barred the former student from returning after her sophomore year, she wrote, "I believe in large part because I objected to the sexual abuse." Wyman died in 2014.

A second alumna, 1996 graduate Jennifer Christiansen Vurno, announced a lawsuit against the school in November. Vurno, 44, sued the elite private school alleging sexual assault and harassment, emotional distress, violation of mandatory child abuse reporting and multiple instances of negligence.

During a press conference, she alleged that she'd been groomed by a former soccer coach at the school, building up to multiple instances of sexual misconduct during her senior year.

Vurno said she'd long avoided talking about her experience, but felt empowered to fight what she described as “a culture of not reporting,” after speaking with investigators from Munger, Tolles and Olson.

The possibility remains for criminal investigations to reopen if victims who declined to participate in investigations change their minds, and civil suits remain possible for all victims.

The opportunity for some civil suits, however, could slam shut when a limited, three-year "lookback" window expires at the end of the year. The window allows survivors of childhood sexual abuse in California to file legal claims no matter how long ago the incident occurred.

Seeking help

Need help? In Ventura County, victims of sexual assault, rape or similar crimes may call the Coalition for Family Harmony's Rape Crisis Center at their Oxnard offices at 805-983-6014 or at their 24-hour hotline 1-800-300-2181.

Sexual assault victims can receive support from the Ventura County Family Justice Center regardless of whether they wish to report a crime to law enforcement. Center staff can be reached at 805-652-7655, via email at vcfjc.coop@ventura.org or by text at 805-947-7981.

To share: If you are part of the Thacher School community, past or present, we'd like to hear from you. You can contact education reporter Isaiah Murtaugh at isaiah.murtaugh@vcstar.com or 805-437-0236.

Isaiah Murtaugh covers education for the Ventura County Star in partnership with Report for America. Reach him at isaiah.murtaugh@vcstar.com or 805-437-0236 and follow him on Twitter @isaiahmurtaugh and @vcsschools. You can support this work with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America.

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: No charges filed in Ojai private school sexual abuse inquiry