Sexual assault lawsuit against TUHSD

By Chloe Bowman

A man identified as John Doe, from Novato, is suing the Tamalpais Union High School District (TUHSD), claiming that he was sexually assaulted for three years by former Tamalpais High School tennis coach Normandie Burgos.

The lawsuit states that from 1999 to 2002, Burgos committed rape, sexual harassment, molestation, and sexual battery, during John Doe’s time on the Tam tennis team. Additionally, Doe is suing the district for negligence, because he claims that an employee walked in on Burgos molesting him, and did nothing to stop it.

“Doe’s allegations are the latest in a decades-long string of abuse claims against Burgos, who in 2019 was convicted in Contra Costa County on 60 counts of child molestation in Richmond,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Burgos is currently serving a 255-year sentence at Mule Creek State Prison in Amador County, after being initially arrested in 2017, on suspicions of sexually assaulting two minors.

“Burgos thought he was meeting a student but instead waiting detectives cuffed him, capping their 6 month investigation,” according to a 2017 article by KTVU News.

He was accused of sexual assault by two Richmond minors, one who was 14 when the abuse began.

The trauma that John Doe claims he endured at the hands of Burgos affected his personal life, decades after the abuse ended. He said he was unable to start a career until he reached his thirties, and had attributed a failed marriage as a result of the abuse as well.

“When I was raped, it’s something that steals who you are. It makes everything uncertain,” he said in the article. “I wanted to start this lawsuit because they took so much away from who I was.”