Six families who had daughters on the Davis High School soccer team have sued the school district. They accuse a former coach of acting inappropriately with teenage girls and say Davis School District administrators mishandled those complaints and failed to stop retaliation.
“As a result of the District's deliberate indifference and inaction, Plaintiffs suffered harm including emotional injury, pain and suffering, past and future expenses for counseling and therapy,” the complaint reads.
The 40-page lawsuit was filed in federal court Jan. 12. While the coach is not named as a defendant in the case and has not been charged with a crime, he is identified in the filing.
This is the latest lawsuit for the Davis School District. It has been sued multiple times over the last decade for hostile school environments, with repeated accusations from students and staff of racial harassment. The U.S. Department of Justice investigated the district and eventually settled in 2021 to address “serious and widespread racial harassment of Black and Asian-American students.”
The six anonymous girls listed as plaintiffs in the newest case played on the Davis High soccer team under a coach who resigned in 2023, though he is still listed as a teacher at the school.
The suit accuses the coach of sexual grooming based on repeated behaviors.
Allegations include encouraging players to recreate music videos for him. In some of them, which were recorded during a class the coach ran for the team, the girls were wearing bikinis or skin-colored bodysuits. The coach also allegedly organized team swim parties where he judged dance competitions. After a district employee told him to stop attending the parties, the coach “pressured the girls” to film swimsuit dance competitions to send to him, according to the complaint. He “also had the girls' soccer team members perform dances for him to judge at team retreats, including ‘twerking.’”
According to the lawsuit, there were also sexual conversations. He told the girls about how he had aspired to become a stripper and described dancing with his clothes off for a bachelorette party, and he allegedly talked to students about their dating lives, asking for intimate details about who they had kissed and how.
He also made comments about how much students were eating and how that would affect their appearance. Similar comments extended to their soccer uniforms, including instructing one student to bend over so that he could see if she had a “sweaty ass.”
The coach also, the complaint contends, followed students on social media and “employed one-on-one text messaging with certain girls to exchange pictures and flirtatious messages.”
In a statement, the Davis School District said it “takes allegations of misconduct seriously. The District does not comment on pending litigation. This approach protects the integrity of the legal process.”
Arranged through their representatives at Parsons Behle & Latimer, including attorney Adam Bondy, KUER spoke with two former students involved with the suit and their mothers. KUER is withholding their identities.
One student said that it was hard to realize in the moment that “what is happening is actually bad.” She kept second-guessing herself. The accused individual had a great coaching reputation for leading successful teams and players. She felt like if she wanted to play, she had to do what the coach said. And this was her dream; she had been playing soccer since first grade.
“I should be grateful that I'm even on the team,” the student recalled thinking at the time. “I thought I was being rude. And I was like, I don't want to be rude to anyone. I don't want to, like, complain about anyone. Like, this is just the environment, and I got to, like, suck it up.”
The student told her parents about what was happening and her discomfort with the coach’s actions. Her mom said that there were already some red flags that gave her misgivings, such as the music videos. But as soon as her daughter shared her concerns, the mom said it was evident that something was wrong.
That mom talked with other concerned parents, and a group repeatedly brought their complaints to the school.
According to the lawsuit, after parents first raised concerns about the coach in September 2023, their daughters got more varsity playing time, but the parents didn’t feel they received a response to the substance of what they had brought up. The complaint alleges that the coach and district viewed all complaints from parents as being about playing time. A news story at the time said the coach was investigated over complaints about playing time.
The lawsuit alleges that the district broke confidentiality and revealed the identities of the families to the coach. Other students, both on the girls’ and boys’ teams, also somehow quickly knew what was happening.
“Rumors, including specific details from the supposedly confidential interviews and statements, emerged among the students. Several members of the girls' and boys' soccer teams began bullying, threatening, and targeting the victims that had reported the misconduct,” the complaint alleges.
The coach was absent from some practices and games. After returning, he resigned on Halloween of 2023.
One player who spoke with KUER said the coach was well-liked. Other players blamed the students who had complained for causing him to leave. She said she was bullied at school and even pushed down. At tryouts the next year, she said students who spoke against the coach were physically targeted, getting kicked and shoved.
“Tryouts were just like a bloodbath,” the student said.
In the end, the students who complained about the coach’s behavior were cut from the team in 2024. The student said they reported the physical bullying, but nothing happened.
The suit alleges that administrators gave the students advice on how to be defensive, rather than discipline the bullying students. One administrator advised the families to drop the complaints if they wanted to keep playing soccer. The principal is alleged to have told the students to lie and say they didn’t report the coach.
The student-athlete’s mother said that when she spoke with district administrators, she felt that they didn’t care and instead doubled down on their support of the coach. If the district had acknowledged that what the coach was doing was wrong and vowed to change things, such as making sure he didn’t text students, the mom believes that would’ve sent a strong message to the school community, and the bullying wouldn’t have happened.
“For me, the biggest danger here is that if they're not willing to enforce their own policies and rules, everyone is at risk,” she said. “There are a lot of people in Davis County who deserve better.”
Another student participating in the lawsuit said that the “people who were supposed to protect me and keep me safe betrayed me, and that confidentiality was completely broken. I was bullied by my peers, by my teammates, by people in authority. It made school an unsafe place for me.”
The student said she didn’t want to go to school, that she lost her confidence and no longer trusts adults. She also didn’t want to play soccer anymore and quit her club team as a result.
Her mother said the group of families felt like they had done everything they were supposed to and followed all of the district’s reporting procedures. But nothing happened.
“We need to hold Davis County School District accountable for this severe institutional betrayal of our daughters, and the only way to do that is to get their attention,” the mom of the second student said.
Bondy, one of the attorneys representing the families, said they had spoken with the district about a settlement. However, Bondy said that would most likely only have been a monetary settlement, so they decided on a lawsuit to try to force a district-wide change.
The suit accuses the district of violating its obligations under Title IX by failing to properly investigate complaints, protect the students’ identities and being indifferent to harassment.
The suit is seeking $10 million in compensation for damages.
