The Los Angeles Unified School District board has agreed to pay $24 million to three former students to settle claims that they were sexually abused by their Langdon Avenue Elementary School teacher multiple times in his classroom during school hours in 2006 and 2007.
The agreement resolves a lawsuit that accused school officials of ignoring complaints against teacher David Ostovich, who was behaving inappropriately at another L.A. Unified elementary school several years before he molested the girls at Langdon, who were 8 and 9 years old at the time.
Ostovich could not be reached for comment. He has denied any wrongdoing in court documents.
The lawsuit alleges that while Ostovich worked at Germain Elementary School, dozens of complaints were filed against him from administrators, teachers, parents and students about his inappropriate behavior with young girls.
Ostovich left that school and took a job at Langdon in the North Hills area of the San Fernando Valley. Court records show that L.A. Unified administrators never shared those previous complaints with Langdon administrators.
At Langdon Elementary, the teacher was reprimanded multiple times, but was allowed to continue teaching fourth grade and later first grade. The lawsuit alleges that in 2006-2007, she molested two of the plaintiffs. The following year, she took over a first-grade class, where she molested a third plaintiff, the lawsuit alleges. All three girls, identified by Jane Doe pseudonyms in the lawsuit, are now adults, ranging in age from 20 to 25.
Plaintiffs’ attorney David Ring said it was a textbook example of “passing the trash,” where a teacher is quietly allowed to move to another school despite repeated complaints about inappropriate behavior with students.
“This is an outrageous case that highlights LAUSD’s systemic failure to protect children from known child molesters,” Ring said in an interview. “The abuse these three women endured changed their lives forever. This was entirely preventable if LAUSD had done its job properly.”
Ring said more than 20 complaints were received about the teacher’s behavior before he was removed.
Ostovich initially started coming to Germain as a volunteer because his two daughters attended the school. He then became a special education assistant and in 2003 there were complaints that he had one girl on his lap and his hand in another girl’s back pocket.
School administrators warned him about his behavior in 2004 after there were reports that he fondled, touched and hugged girls. Despite the reprimand, he was given the principal’s award and also received his teaching certificate in 2004-2005, according to court documents in the lawsuit.
According to court documents in the case, a young teacher witnessed his continued inappropriate behavior and denied him a job at the school, but because the principal never reported it in writing, Ostovich got a job at Langdon.
The lawsuit alleges that in 2006 and 2007, when he was in his late 40s and teaching fourth-graders, Ostovich began teasing and eventually sexually abusing the girls. The lawsuit alleges that he would often ask the young girls to stay with him during recess and lunch behind closed doors in his classroom, and would touch, rub and hug them inappropriately in addition to sexually abusing them.
One girl alleged in her statement that he forced her to stay in his classroom during lunch and sexually abused her. She said in court documents that even during class he came to her desk and made her sit on his lap and molested her in front of her classmates, letting them know she was being abused.
The school then promoted him to first-grade teacher. In July 2007, Langdon’s new principal, Leah Perotti, received a complaint from a parent that Ostovich had been “touching” girls, and he was given a written reprimand and warned that a child abuse report would be filed if any further allegations were made against him.
Despite the warnings, other teachers saw girls on his lap, alone with him and hugging him, the lawsuit says, leading Perotti to file a suspected child abuse report against him. In December 2007, he was removed from the classroom. Perotti learned of the sexual abuse allegations the following year, and Los Angeles police investigated, court records show.
Ostovich was criminally charged in February 2009 and subsequently pleaded no contest to two counts of assault involving his two fourth-grade victims. His teaching certificate was subsequently revoked by the State Teaching Credentialing Authority.
All three women sued the district in 2021. During a deposition, LA Unified’s top administrator, who is now Manhattan Beach’s superintendent, acknowledged that school officials should have filed a suspected child abuse report after each incident at Germain.
