Alleged Sex Abuse Victims File Claim

A multimillion-dollar claim has been filed against the school district that employed a 30-year-old Camarillo High School teacher now accused of sex acts with several students.

Chad Wenzlick Pridgen, a teacher and coach at the school, faces 39 felony and misdemeanor counts involving 11 teenage boys, nine of whom are former or current Camarillo High students.

Ventura attorney Brenda Andrade confirmed Thursday that she filed the claim against the Oxnard Union High School District last week on behalf of four alleged victims and their parents.

In April, Andrade said she was trying to determine what and when school officials knew about Pridgen’s alleged activity. If they were liable, she said, she would file a claim.

Andrade on Thursday would not reveal the details of what she found or the amount of the claim.

“At this time, the school district has indicated a willingness to resolve this matter without further litigation,” she said.

Although legal claims are generally a matter of public record, school district officials refused to provide a copy of the claim to The Times on Wednesday.

Carol Woo, the school district’s attorney, said she needs to look at the claim to “make a determination on what, if any, part of it needs to be released.”

Woo said she is exercising the district’s right under California law to keep the information private for 10 days, but did not provide a specific reason for doing so.

But Terry Francke, general counsel for the Sacramento-based First Amendment Coalition, said the California Public Records Act forbids the 10-day provision from being used as a way to delay or obstruct access to a record if the document is clearly public.

“An agency cannot just use this stalling period arbitrarily,” Francke said.

School board President Robert Valles and board member Steve Stocks said trustees discussed the claim in a closed session during a meeting Wednesday.

The posted agenda, however, made no mention of discussion of pending litigation, as required by the state’s open-meeting law. Furthermore, Francke said, if a claim is discussed in closed session, the Brown Act requires that the claim be made available to the public without delay.

Valles said the school board was orally briefed on the claim. He believed such a discussion was allowed under the “personnel” exemption in the Ralph M. Brown Act, which is listed on the May 29 agenda.

“That’s an administrative matter,” Valles said. “They know what they’re doing.”

This is not the first time the Oxnard high school district has run into such problems.

In October, Ventura County Dist. Atty. Michael D. Bradbury warned the school board to familiarize itself with the state’s open-meeting law. Bradbury was responding to allegations that trustees violated the law in the June 12 firing of former Supt. William Studt.

A government claim like the one filed by Andrade is typically the first step to a civil lawsuit. In this case, however, district officials said they want to work with Andrade to prevent any further harm to the alleged victims.

“We’re trying to understand what happened,” said Steven A. Gama, the district’s risk manager. “We feel in this case, it doesn’t seem the best course of action to summarily reject the claim and fight it out in court.”

Andrade was hired in March by the father of one of the alleged victims.

The boy’s father wanted to know whether teachers and administrators knew or should have known that teens were frequenting Pridgen’s home for weekend parties that authorities say included alcohol, pornography and sexual abuse.

Since then, at least three more families have joined the civil case.

Pridgen taught upper-level chemistry and environmental science courses at Camarillo High and coached boys’ soccer and girls’ and boys’ tennis. He has been on unpaid leave from the district since his arrest Feb. 5 and is currently free on $500,000 bail.

His preliminary hearing is set for July 23 in Ventura County Superior Court.