By admin 
Faculty and staff at Folsom Middle School failed to intervene as a teacher sexually abused a student in 2008, according to a new civil lawsuit against the teacher and the Folsom Cordova Unified School District.
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The former student, now an adult, sued former teacher Steven Kester and the district earlier this month.
The school district employed Kester, 80, for nearly five decades. His tenure ended in 2021 when he was arrested on suspicions of child sexual abuse and later charged with six counts of child sexual abuse and one count of possession of child pornography. Kester pleaded guilty to the charges in December and has been incarcerated at the California Institution for Men in Chino since being sentenced.
The new lawsuit adds another former student to a growing number of people who have accused Kester of sexual abuse. Criminal filings against Kester described sexual abuse of his own daughter and an elementary school student for whom Kester was a substitute teacher.
Several years after his arrest, four former students alleged in a civil complaint that Kester abused and groomed them at various times from 1998 to 2021. Those plaintiffs, who were between 11 and 39 years old at the time of filing, said the assaults occurred at schools across the district, including Cordova Meadows Elementary, Folsom Middle School and Folsom Cordova High School.
Kester was hired by the school district as a full-time teacher in 1976. He retired in 2012 but returned as a substitute teacher later that year, according to a 2021 statement from the district.
The complaint filed this month detailed another former student’s allegations against Kester, this time stemming from the 2008-09 school year.
Kester would isolate the student behind a locked door before the start of the school day, according to the plaintiff, who had been enrolled in the teacher’s homeroom and physical education class.
Kester first offered to teach the student about football after noticing that he didn’t like the sport, the complaint alleges. But according to the suit, Kester instead began showing the middle school student pornography and, on several occasions, molested him.
Lawsuits allege district ignored warning signs
Kester’s former students alleged a disturbing pattern in their lawsuits: School employees knew or should have known about Kester’s conduct but failed to stop him, according to the complaints.
Faculty and staff could or should have witnessed Kester isolating a student in a locked classroom, the recently filed complaint alleged, but none intervened to stop the abuse. When the student asked to be removed from the teacher’s class, a guidance counselor ignored his request, according to the lawsuit.
Two plaintiffs in the previously-filed lawsuit also alleged that they’d asked school administrators to transfer them out of Kester’s class.
The teacher’s reputation was so widespread among students that he was known by the nickname “Kester the molester,” both complaints alleged.
Both lawsuits also allege that Kester’s “open and obvious misconduct” presented the school district with “ample red flags and warnings.”
That case remained pending, with no trial date set.
In a 2021 statement following Kester’s arrest, Folsom Cordova Unified said that his employee file showed no arrest reports or disciplinary action. The district declined to comment on the suits.
Read more New lawsuit accuses Folsom Cordova Unified of failing to stop teacher’s sex abuse
Recent law cleared a path for plaintiffs
Many people who alleged Kester abused them became eligible to sue him following the 2019 passage of a California law that gave survivors of childhood sexual assault more time to file lawsuits against their abusers.
Before the new law, most childhood sexual assault survivors had until age 26 to sue their abusers and institutions implicated in the abuse, such as schools and churches. Assembly Bill 218 extended that deadline to age 40 for many survivors.
A more recent law entirely removed the statute of limitations for childhood sexual assault claims, but it only applies to incidents that took place in 2024 or later.
AB 218 was heralded by advocates of childhood sexual assault as a new opportunity for adult survivors to find justice and closure, in some cases decades after experiencing abuse and trauma at schools, churches and other organizations serving children. It extended the statute of limitations on claims against those institutions and increased the potential amount of damages a survivor could be awarded.
But concerns raised by groups representing school districts and administrators before the law took effect have intensified in recent years.
Prior to its passage, a number of organizations, including the California School Boards Association, told the California Senate they opposed the bill in a 2019 letter.
AB 218 would cause harm by “forcing billions of dollars in payments from today’s schools that have no fiscal reserves for these liabilities, for claims that involve employees and administrators long gone from decades prior,” the organizations wrote. The letter was also signed by a trade association for risk-management groups that provide liability coverage for school districts.
By 2025, local school districts and other educational agencies faced an estimated $2 billion to $3 billion in claims linked to AB 218, by a state-funded agency that provides financial guidance to school districts.
Last year, former San Diego Assemblymember Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher joined critics who argued that some personal injury attorneys, who can receive attorney fees from successful cases, had exploited the law.
“When I authored AB 218 my priority was to protect kids from sex abuse & ensure victims could have some justice. Now, some unscrupulous attorneys are treating it like a feeding frenzy,” she wrote in a 2025 post on X. “I support reforms to cap attorneys fees or other measures to reel the costs in for public entities.”
For Folsom Cordova Unified, the two lawsuits related to allegations against Kester were, as of now, the only cases against the district enabled by AB 218.
A 2019 complaint alleging that two bus drivers witnessed but did not report child-on-child sexual abuse ended with a $1.7 million jury award against the district. But that case was filed while the plaintiff was still a minor.
Another complaint filed by a minor seeks to hold the school district liable for alleged abuse of a special-needs student by Gary Spencer Jimenez Jr., a former aide. Litigation in the case, which was filed in 2025, remains ongoing.
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