LOS ANGELES — Victims of a Los Angeles-area high school wrestling coach who was convicted of sexually molesting nine children were awarded $52 million in a settlement on Wednesday.
The settlement comes two years after Terry Gillard, 56, who worked with wrestling teams at John H. Francis Polytechnic High School in the Sun Valley neighborhood of Los Angeles, was sentenced to 71 years in state prison for dozens of sex crimes involving nine boys and girls, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Prosecutors said Gillard met his victims while working with wrestling teams at the high school and at the Tigers Wrestling Club at the Boys & Girls Club of the San Fernando Valley, which also was sued, according to the newspaper.
The settlement, involving 15 victims and their families, comes two years after Terry Gillard was sentenced to 71 years in state prison for dozens of sex crimes involving nine boys and girls, some of whom were preteens when he assaulted them.https://t.co/OosFarHwNc
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) October 12, 2022
Prosecutors said that between 1991 and 2017, Gillard sexually abused the children, who were between the ages of 11 and 17, KTLA-TV reported. The lawsuit alleged that the Los Angeles Unified School District knew of prior sexual misconduct and did nothing about it, according to the Times.
In May 2019, a San Fernando jury convicted Gillard on 37 felony and 10 misdemeanor counts, including lewd acts on children under the age of 16, oral copulation with a minor, procuring children to engage in lewd acts and child molestation, the newspaper reported.
“The size of this settlement highlights the tremendous harm done to our clients by Terry Gillard and the abject failure of LAUSD to protect the students at Francis Polytechnic High School from this truly deranged predator,” lead attorney Morgan Stewart said. “Our lawsuit also exposed LAUSD’s Student Safety Investigation Team as a fraud and a public relations gimmick.”
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