Deceased Vallejo teacher was ‘serial sexual predator,’ lawsuits allege

VALLEJO – Two lawsuits against the Vallejo City Unified School District allege that an award winning teacher in Vallejo sexually abused students for decades beginning in the 1960s.

The suits allege that Larry Hom, who worked as an English teacher for the district from the mid 1960s to the late 1990s, sexually abused at least two students in the 1960s and the 1980s, but staff members who “knew or should have known” about Hom’s behavior did nothing to prevent or stop it. Both suits were initially filed in 2022. One is still open. In the other case, a judge ruled against the plaintiff late last year.  Hom died in the mid 2010s.

Until recently, lawsuits involving accusations which extended back that far would have been barred from being heard. But that changed in 2020 when Assembly Bill 218, which greatly expanded the statute of limitations for survivors of childhood sexual abuse, went into effect.

Vallejo’s school district was sued in another AB 218 related case in 2022 by a woman who  alleged that retired teacher and wrestling coach Andrew Foley repeatedly raped her as a child in the 1980s. The case was settled in 2024.

The district is far from alone in dealing with AB 218 cases. From 2020 to 2024, over 1,100 alleged childhood sexual abuse victims have sued approximately 30% of California’s schools districts, according the the Los Angeles Times, and about two-thirds of those cases are related to AB 218. One report commissioned by the California State Legislature estimates that school districts have paid between $2 and $3 billion in AB 218 related legal fees and settlements.

Other Vallejo school district staff members have also faced accusations of sexual assault in recent years. Former wrestling coach and teacher JohnPaul Cagandahan Acac is serving an eight year prison sentence for sex crimes involving two minors in the 2010s, and the district is facing two lawsuit from Acac’s former students.

In December, Reuben Freeman, a site safety supervisor at Vallejo High, was arrested and charged with soliciting a lewd act from a student.

Vallejo school district spokesperson Celina Baguiao told the Vallejo Sun the district is unable to comment on ongoing litigation.

One of the lawsuits involving Hom was filed on behalf of an unnamed former student who attended the now defunct Vallejo Jr. High School in 1985 and 1986 when they were 14 and 15 years old. The suit alleges that district staff failed to stop Hom from sodomizing and forcing oral copulation on the student on multiple occasions. The same suit alleges Hom was a “serial sexual predator” who was abusing other students at the time, but doesn’t say how many.

The suit alleges that district staff allowed Hom “unfettered and unmonitored access to children,” and that this access allowed Hom to abuse them. According to the complaint, Hom regularly left class early with the victim and took the victim and other students out alone in his vehicle during school hours, often to a movie theater. It was on these trips where Hom allegedly sexually abused children.

The suit alleges that the victim’s mother told Vallejo Jr. High Principal Wes Mathews, who is now deceased, that Hom was regularly taking her son out of class, and that the victim told other teachers that Hom had been giving him expensive gifts. Despite staff allegedly being aware of what the suit describes as Hom’s “wildly inappropriate behavior,” the suit says the district “did not investigate the matter and took no action to stop [Hom’s] abuse.”

While working at Vallejo Jr. High School in the 1980s, Hom was well respected in the community. In 1981, Hom was selected as the Solano County teacher of the year. Mathews praised Hom’s work ethic at the time, telling the Vallejo Independent Press that Hom arrived at school at 5:30 each morning, was among the last teachers to leave, and devoted “every minute of his time to classroom instruction or individual student counseling.” In 1984, the Vallejo Elks Lodge, a fraternal organization, named Hom as one of twelve top educators in Vallejo, Benicia and Crockett. 

Hom’s victims are traumatized though, according to the lawsuits. The suit stemming from incidents in the mid-1980s claims the victim “continues to suffer severe and permanent psychological, emotional, and physical injuries, shame, humiliation, and the inability to lead a normal life.” 

Solano County Superior Court Judge Stephen Gizzi ruled against the alleged victim in another lawsuit against the school district which stems from events that allegedly occurred starting in 1968. An individual who attended the now-closed Solano Middle School alleged that Hom masturbated in front of him and forced oral copulation on him. The victim still experiences “great mental pain, embarrassment, distress, anguish and suffering,” according to the lawsuit. There is a motion for a new trial pending next week. 

The case shares similarities to the one from the 1980s, alleging school leadership staff ignored that Hom regularly gave expensive gifts to the victim and other boys in his classes which they would receive alone with Hom in his vehicle in the school parking lot, where Hom allegedly abused the victim.

Other districts have paid large AB 218 settlements 

If the district decides to settle or is found legally liable in the cases involving Hom, it’s unclear how much it will have to pay as it wrestles with a budget crisis that recently caused its board to agree to close five schools. 

Other AB 281 related cases have hit some school districts hard. Montecito Union School District, a small district in Southern California with an annual budget of around $19 million, agreed to a $7.5 million settlement over a long dead principal who allegedly abused two students in the 1970s. 

Another Southern California school district, the Carpinteria Unified School District, was pushed to the brink of bankruptcy due to $5.75 million settlements over suits involving a deceased principal who was convicted in the 1980s of abusing students, Superintendent Diana Rigby told the San Francisco Chronicle. Los Angeles’s school district recently took on $500 million in bond debt to help cover more than 370 cases.

Some educational leaders have called for reform to AB 218. Montecito Union Superintendent Anthony Ranii has said that the age of the cases means school districts aren’t able to track down witnesses and records to mount a defense. In an opinion piece, Carpinteria Board of Education trustee Andy Sheaffer said “the unintended consequences imposed on school districts by this law are an existential threat to public education in California.” He said the cost of his district’s settlements has caused cuts to services for its current students, who are majority low income and Latino.

In September, state Sen. John Laird, D-Santa Cruz, proposed new legislation to reinstate the statute of limitations that AB 218 had eliminated, but lawmakers did not hold a vote on it, and the law remains unchanged. The bill faced pushback from victims rights advocates. 

Chantel Johnson, a director of the Youth Law Center, testified against Laird’s proposal before the Assembly Judiciary Committee in July, saying it would limit survivors from seeking justice, especially from foster and juvenile justice systems with extensive abuse allegations. 

AB 218 cases are not limited to school districts. In April, Los Angeles County agreed to pay a $4 billion settlement to nearly 7,000 claimants of sexual abuse that allegedly occurred from the 1980s to 2000s in its juvenile facilities. In 2024, the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles agreed to pay $880 million to settle over 1,300 decades-old claims of childhood sexual abuse and the law was also cited in recent bankruptcy announcements from Catholic dioceses in Fresno, Oakland, Santa Rosa, Sacramento, San Diego, and San Francisco.

Hom’s abusive behavior may have started before the district hired him 

Allegations against Hom have not been limited to court cases, nor Vallejo. Jack L., a retired police officer who currently lives in Nevada, said that Hom acted in an inappropriate sexual manner towards him when he was Jack’s English teacher at Downer Jr. High in San Pablo in 1963. The Vallejo Sun agreed to use only Jack’s first name, as he is a victim of alleged sexual abuse. Yearbook photos show Hom taught at Downer Jr. High at the same time Jack attended the school.

According to Jack, Hom opened up a locked cabinet and pulled out sketches of a muscular naked man while Jack was alone with Hom in his classroom after school. Jack said Hom then invited him to his apartment and told him he’d “like me to model for him for some sketches” and that “the way he draws is by feeling the muscles with his hands.” 

Jack said he refused to accompany Hom, and instead went home and told his mom about the incident. Jack recalled that, after school staff members were informed of what happened, he had a substitute teacher for the rest of the year, and was later told by a school counselor that Hom resigned.

The Vallejo school district hired Hom in 1964. Neither of the lawsuits against Vallejo mention the incident with Jack, although both accuse the district of negligence in hiring.

Jack told the Vallejo Sun that although he thinks he’s recovered from it, Hom’s attempt to molest him has stuck with him his entire life. Every few years he said he would research to see if Hom had been arrested or accused of any crimes. It was during one of these searches recently that Jack learned about the lawsuits. He said he wasn’t surprised.

“I always knew it would pan out this way,” Jack said. “I just knew at some point it would come out.”