The mother of a Shoreline Unified School District student is suing the district, alleging that its failure to conduct an adequate background check or heed warnings about former superintendent Bob Raines enabled him to molest her son.
The woman, a district employee identified in the suit as Janet Roe, is seeking unspecified damages from Shoreline and from Mr. Raines, who are both named as defendants.
In November, a Marin County jury found Mr. Raines guilty of engaging in lewd conduct with the boy, and last month a judge sentenced him to 210 days in jail and one year of probation. Mr. Raines, who was also ordered to register as a sex offender, plans to appeal the verdict.
Ms. Roe is on leave from her job at the district headquarters. She and her son, an elementary student, were not identified in court or the civil suit to protect the privacy of the boy. He is still attending school at Shoreline.
According to the suit, two people warned the district that Mr. Raines posed a threat to young boys before he molested Ms. Roe’s son, but school officials did nothing to protect him. “Despite S.U.S.D.’s awareness of Raines’s misconduct, they failed to investigate, supervise, or monitor him to ensure the plaintiff’s safety,” the suit states.
The incidents described in the suit occurred during the 2020-2021 school year, during the pandemic. Ms. Roe was working in the district office, not far from Mr. Raines’s office. During the first part of the year, school was conducted online, and Ms. Roe brought her son to work, where he sat next to her and participated in class with an iPad.
The boy sometimes spent time in the superintendent’s office, playing, reading and drawing cartoons. At first, Ms. Roe trusted Mr. Raines and did not suspect anything inappropriate. The door was open, and her colleagues could see inside.
But one day, a co-worker saw Ms. Roe’s son enter Mr. Raines’s office and close the door. Another colleague later saw the boy sitting on Mr. Raines’s lap. “Something’s off with Bob,” the second colleague told Ms. Roe, according to the suit, which accuses the district of negligence, inflicting emotional distress, assault, battery and sexual harassment.
A few months later, when Ms. Roe was preparing to leave for the day, she called for her son. She peered inside the superintendent’s office and saw something moving in her son’s shorts, as if someone was stroking his leg, the suit states.
She didn’t get a clear view, but she felt uncomfortable and decided not to bring her son to work anymore. Soon thereafter, in-person classes resumed. She put her suspicions about Mr. Raines behind her until four months later, at the end of May, when she brought her son to the office briefly so she could finish some work.
She again found her son, who is identified in the suit as John Roe, in the superintendent’s office. The door was partially open, and she peeked inside without letting Mr. Raines know she was there. The suit states that she saw her son leaning against the superintendent’s leg while reading aloud from a comic book, and Mr. Raines stroking her son’s thigh toward his crotch.
“Janet Roe walked into the room suddenly and interrupted them, informing John Roe that it was time to leave,” the suit states. “It appeared to her that Raines was startled, froze, then stood up quickly, sat back down and hugged John Roe goodbye.”
The incident occurred shortly before Mr. Raines intended to retire after a 43-year career in education. Ms. Roe immediately informed incoming superintendent Adam Jennings, then the Tomales High School principal, who reported the incident to the sheriff’s office and advised her to do the same.
Mr. Raines was arrested on June 8, 2021.
A day or two after the incident, when she returned to work, she ran into Mr. Jennings in the school parking lot, and they discussed what had occurred, Ms. Roe said.
“He made it very clear his job was to protect the district,” she told the Light in an interview last week. “That really caught me off guard, because here I was, a parent who had just witnessed somebody molesting my child. We have been victims of this horrific crime, and he was telling me his priority was to protect the district.”
Mr. Jennings told the Light that he has consistently sought to support the victim’s family.
“I can understand and respect that they may feel anger at the school district and anyone in a position of authority, given what transpired with Bob Raines,” he said. “I do believe it is my job to protect her child and have never stated otherwise.”
He declined to comment on the specifics of the lawsuit, which the district had not yet received, but he has previously said that the district conducted a thorough background check before hiring Mr. Raines.
Both Ms. Roe and her son testified at Mr. Raines’s criminal trial. The ordeal has been extremely difficult, she told the Light, and it continues to torment them. “I feel like I’m drowning every day,” she said.
During the trial, a former student at Wilson Elementary School in Petaluma testified that he had been the victim of similar inappropriate behavior during the 2006-2007 school year, when he was in third grade and Mr. Raines was serving as principal and district superintendent.
A former Wilson Elementary teacher testified that she had seen several fourth- and fifth-grade boys sitting on Mr. Raines’s lap in his office. She notified the school board and the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, but no charges were filed.
According to the suit, an unidentified teacher in a district where Raines previously worked contacted Shoreline after he was hired there and informed the district that he had been investigated for child molestation. In addition, a Shoreline employee acquainted with school board members in another district shared similar warnings with Shoreline staff. The lawsuit does not specify whom the two women informed.
Pursuing abuse charges through the legal system is an exhausting process, Ms. Roe said. “I just hope that other parents who may find themselves in this position will stay strong for their child and not give up,” she said. “Our children deserve for us to stand up for them by not allowing abuse to be swept under the rug.”