Former Morro Bay High School teacher groomed underage student for sex, teen’s lawsuit says
One of two teenage survivors of an former Morro Bay High School teacher’s sexual abuse says in a lawsuit that school district officials failed to protect her against the 25-year-old even after learning he was suspected of misconduct.
The lawsuit, filed by the 17-year-old confidential victim in San Luis Obispo Superior Court late last month, names Tyler Dale Andree and the San Luis Coastal Unified School District as defendants for sexual assault and various forms of negligence.
It follows Andree’s plea agreement with prosecutors in July when he pleaded no contest to felony charges of unlawful intercourse with a minor and contacting another minor for a sexual offense in exchange for a sentence of 120 days in jail and two years of supervised probation.
He’s also required to register as a sex offender for 20 years.
Despite that sentence, a judge granted Andree’s request to serve his sentence in home detention on Wednesday after the Sheriff’s Office initially rejected, but later accepted on appeal, his application for the agency’s alternative sentencing program.
The lawsuit, which describes Andree as a “predator,” was filed in court in August by the student to whom Andree sent explicit messages.
The lawsuit also says Andree, who was one of Morro Bay High’s swim coaches, attempted to initiate a physical sexual relationship with the teen.
She told The Tribune in an email in February that “the crossing of boundaries by an authority figure is something that will undoubtedly stick with me for the rest of my life.”
“I rarely think about anything else besides what happened then and what is going on now. I understand how severe this is,” she wrote. “As of now, I expect to struggle in future intimate and non-intimate relationships, especially with feeling secure in my judgment and confident about the people important to me.”
Lawsuit: Coach took advantage of COVID-19 to earn teen’s trust
The complaint cites a National Criminal Justice Reference Service statistic that says approximately 10% of students in kindergarten through 12th grade are subjected to sexual misconduct by a school employee by the time they graduate from high school.
“State and federal laws are in place to prevent these incidents from occurring, but procedural systems only work when the laws are followed. In this case, they were not,” the lawsuit says.
The document says that beginning on Sept. 14, 2020, Andree started sending sexually explicit communications to the student, identified as Jane Doe.
“Mr. Andree kept up the harassment on a regular and daily basis through phone calls, texts and social media messaging,” the complaint says. “Within a week, Mr. Andree explicitly solicited sexual contact with Jane Doe.”
The teen had met Andree about a year prior through an advanced placement chemistry class, and she swam on Morro Bay High’s girls varsity swim team.
The filing says that Andree took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic, inviting the girl to work out with the Avila Beach Junior Guard Aides and another club led by Andree in the mornings before school when all in-person Morro Bay High School sports were canceled in March 2020.
“These off-campus workouts were school-related activities and were intended as a way to circumvent the ban on in-person school sports,” the lawsuit reads.
In September 2020, Andree’s texts and other messages “became more direct and sexually explicit,” soliciting and exchanging sexually explicit photographs and videos,” and ultimately inviting Jane Doe to engage in sexual activity, according to the lawsuit.
The complaint says Andree continued to exchange and solicit sexually inappropriate texts, social media posts, phone calls and voice mails with the teen until his arrest in February following a three-week investigation by the Morro Bay Police Department.
The complaint argues that, as a teacher at the school and a mandated reporter, Andree owed the student a duty of care but instead abused his authority and position of trust with the intention of causing “harmful and offensive contact with Jane Doe.”
“Tyler Andree groomed Jane Doe using his role as a coach and teacher by saying things to gain her trust and seemingly provide her attention and support,” the filing says. “Tyler Andree was actually working to build emotional dependence and trust with Jane Doe, which he was later able to exploit for sexual purposes.”
As a result, the student suffered emotional distress, mental anguish and pain and suffering, creating a need for immediate and future medical care and counseling, the lawsuit says.
It further alleges the school district was negligent in hiring Andree and employees failed to report his conduct in a timely manner even after he was suspected of misconduct.
District personnel should have known Andree “was acting as sexual predator toward his students with his position of authority,” the lawsuit says.
The victim is seeking unspecified amount of damages for past and future medical and incidental expenses; past and future loss of earnings and earning capacity and general and punitive damages, as well as attorneys’ fees.
School district argues teen ‘contributed to and caused’ any injuries
In a general denial filed Sept. 13, the San Luis Coastal district’s attorneys said any negligence involved in the case was not caused by district staff and that “the plaintiff acted with full knowledge of all the facts and circumstances surrounding her injury, and that said matters of which plaintiff assumed the risk proximately contributed to and proximately caused her injury, if any.”
The district’s response says that Jane Doe, “by the exercise of reasonable effort and/or care, could have mitigated the amount of damages alleged to have been suffered, but plaintiff has failed, neglected and refused, and continues to fail and refuse, to exercise a reasonable effort to mitigate the damages.”
Any damages, the district argued, “were the result of and solely caused by an irresistible, super human act which no man can control, to wit: an unusual and unprecedented event” that is the basis for the student’s lawsuit.
The civil case is scheduled for its first hearing in December.
According to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing’s online database, Andree’s credential was revoked for misconduct on Tuesday.
This story was originally published September 30, 2021 at 11:09 AM.
