DANVILLE – Nicholas Moseby was two months into his first-ever teaching job at San Ramon Valley High School when two freshmen girls warned campus administrators about a troubling comment he made.
“He whispered, ‘You are lucky you guys are hot,’” according to one girl’s written account in October 2021.
More complaints followed, in February from another girl and in March from a parent, reporting alleged inappropriate behavior by Moseby, a 41-year-old biology teacher who also coached cheerleaders in Danville and San Ramon. But school administrators failed to sound an alarm, keeping Moseby in the classroom and eventually transferring him to a nearby middle school.
The judgment call may have had devastating consequences. Contra Costa prosecutors now allege Moseby went on to sexually assault a 13-year-old girl in a Diablo Vista Middle School PE class, one of five young accusers to come forward. Another of them is the girl he had called “hot.”
Moseby is now in Contra Costa County jail, following his September arrest, charged with child molestation, including multiple counts of lewd acts upon a child, sending a lewd video to a girl and molesting or annoying a minor.
This news organization has previously reported that a parent of a cheerleader raised concerns to the head of the privately-run cheer organization, Nor*Cal Elites, where Moseby worked as a coach, about rumors involving his behavior with young girls, months before his arrest.
Now, a review of two dozen pages of school documents obtained through a public records act request, court records and interviews with parents and the attorney representing three accusers paint a fuller picture of the school district’s failure to protect students by disregarding federal guidance about complaint-handling and ignoring patterns that appear to have constituted grooming behavior.
Instead of removing Moseby from the classroom following the student complaints, he was transferred to neighboring Diablo Vista Middle School after the spring 2022 semester, records show. These new revelations have added to the outrage felt by parents, who were already upset Moseby was hired to teach despite criminal allegations at previous jobs that he had solicited a prostitute and supplied alcohol to a teenage girl.
“San Ramon Valley administrators knew about inappropriate sexual abuse in the classroom because female students made several written complaints against him,” said victims’ attorney Jason Runckel. “The San Ramon Valley High School administrators ignored the complaints.”
In an email, district spokesperson Tammy Herley wrote, “following this situation and as part of our commitment to continuous improvement, we are reviewing with all administration and staff the critical importance of prompt and proper responses to a student’s concerns.”
But the district is standing by the way the student reports were investigated, even though at least one of the students is now among Moseby’s five young accusers in a criminal case filed by the Contra Costa District Attorney’s Office.
“In the situation that you are inquiring about, students bravely shared with site administration that they were uncomfortable about a former employee’s behavior toward them, and this was investigated,” Herley added.
But a parent of one of the girls couldn’t disagree more.
“My daughter reported Moseby three times. The school lost one of the complaints,” the mother of one of the high school students who filed the October 2021 complaint told this news organization. Her name is being withheld because it would identify her daughter.
She said Moseby repeatedly called her daughter “hot,” gave her a nickname and sat too close. “This story makes me cringe. My husband and myself tried to get involved. The school took weeks to ‘investigate’ each offense.”
The district has not provided a direct answer explaining why any of the students’ reports against Moseby were not turned over and investigated by the Title IX office, as their policy and federal regulations require.
Records show the two girls left their biology class Oct. 21, 2021, to speak with an administrator about Moseby’s behavior. No one was available, so they filled out written reports. According to the reports, Moseby had told the girls to go into a school hallway to review a class project. Following behind them, he said something “that made us feel uncomfortable,” one of the girls wrote.
The girl recounted the “you are lucky you guys are hot” comment, which records show was also heard by the second freshmen girl. Both of them asked for administrators to follow up.
But, according to the district’s records, it took a week before the administration learned of the reports – only after one of the girls sent an email asking why no one had reached out to her yet.
“Did I miss the report or did you give it to one of the (assistant principals)? I have so many damn papers on my desk just want to make sure I didn’t overlook it,” San Ramon Valley High Principal Whitney Cottrell wrote in an email to her assistant.
This led to a scramble involving an assistant, human resources, a principal and two vice principals. Ultimately, in late November, Assistant Principal Ann Marie Walters announced the outcome of her investigation, which appears to have imposed no consequences on Moseby, and shows more weight was given to statements made by Moseby and other unrelated adults over the student accusers.
Records also show Assistant Principal Nicole Chaplan involved herself in the investigation, despite having a possible conflict of interest. Moseby used her as a personal reference when he got the high school job, although the prior relationship between the two, if any, is not clear. Chaplan did not respond to multiple calls and text messages seeking comment for this article.
Moseby “recalled the incident well and was horrified to hear what it was reported,” Walters wrote. He admitted to telling the girls to go into the hallway and communicated “something along the lines of staying on task or not pestering to go out anymore.”
She invited other administrators “to reach out to him if you have further questions, he is happy to share.”
Other records produced to this news organization show that subsequent reports of inappropriate behavior by Moseby were made in February and March 2022, though little detail is provided. In the first, a student said Moseby told her “I need to find a better friend because I’m so much better than (student name redacted) and she’s not pretty.” In the second, a mother of a student emailed Principal Cottrell and Vice Principal Chaplan requesting follow-up on two reports her daughter had made about Moseby. The mother’s email said the daughter “has expressed to us she does not feel comfortable in Mr. Moseby’s class due to situations that have happened.”
It is not clear whether these reports were investigated, as the district lawyers informed this news organization that no investigatory records exist.
These two reports came around the time of an incident, previously reported by this news organization, in which a group of freshman boys taped a poster to Moseby’s classroom door with the claim that he was a “pedophile.” At the time the school deemed the incident part of a targeted harassment campaign against Moseby.
But there is no indication in the records that the administrators who received these various complaints and reports considered a possible connection between them.
Moseby was then quietly transferred to Diablo Vista Middle. Chaplan left to go to the Lafayette School District around the same time.
In a letter on behalf of Moseby filed in court by his public defender, one of his supporters said Moseby has surrounded himself with young girls for years.
At San Ramon Valley High and within the cheer community, Moseby developed a reputation of being charismatic, bubbly and trustworthy, some supporters say. According to other support letters filed in court, many of his student-athletes considered him to be a close friend.
He “talks like the girls,” one student wrote. Another said that he connected with a lot of his students and cheer athletes on Snapchat, and would communicate with them often outside of lessons.
But another parent of a Diablo Vista Middle School student told this news organization she was horrified upon learning of the allegations against Moseby. She cited previous reporting regarding Moseby’s 2009 arrest in Arizona for allegedly supplying alcohol to a minor, which the district has said he did disclose at the time he was hired, and a 2015 charge that he solicited a sex worker in Oakland, which he failed to disclose.
“I’m outraged and my blood boils just thinking about how the high school ‘protected’ him,” Kathy Makosa Anderson said. “Despite all his previous arrests and the fact he disclosed he gave alcohol to a minor, the district still hired him.”
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