5 women file lawsuit against Clovis Unified, alleging sexual abuse by ex-teacher
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- Five women filed suit against Clovis Unified, citing sexual abuse by ex-teacher.
- Lawsuit alleges the district ignored claims and warning signs about Neng Yang.
- A state bill allows adult victims to sue over childhood abuse, raising district liability.
Five women are suing Clovis Unified, alleging the school district disregarded accusations of sexual abuses by their teacher while they were students at Fancher Creek Elementary School.
The plaintiffs allege they were sexually abused by former teacher Neng Yang, who was sentenced to 38 years in prison in 2014 for producing child sexual abuse material. Yang was employed at Fancher Creek Elementary as an instructional aide from 1993-1997 and a teacher from 1997-2007, according to the school district.
After leaving Fancher Creek, Yang worked at Freedom Elementary until he was arrested by the Central California Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force in 2012.
The alleged abuses in the complaint, first reported by the Los Angeles Times, happened at various points between 1998 and 2005.
The lawsuit accuses Clovis Unified of failing to act after receiving complaints of Yang’s alleged abuses and other “warning signs,” such as being “touchy feely”with students and using “sexually inappropriate language.”
The complaint alleges that, during the 2004-05 school year, an employee “saw Mr. Yang looking at child pornography” with one of the plaintiffs, who was a second-grade student at the time.
After the student was directed to the office, administrators “interrogated” her and “encouraged her to remain silent,” according to the lawsuit.
Another plaintiff, Tiffany Thrailkill, told The Bee in an interview that she was punished after she came forward to school administrators with claims of abuse as a child. The Bee typically does not name victims of sexual assault, though Thrailkill said she wanted to speak out and encourage other victims to come forward.
“When I was in second grade, I was violated by Mr. Yang,” said Thrailkill. “What they told my grandmother was I was not normal — that normal kids don’t make up stuff like this. So, they put me in mental health counseling.”
Thrailkill said she was diagnosed and put on medication for ADHD, bipolar disorder and depression before returning to Yang’s class and remaining at Fancher Creek until the end of sixth grade. Her accusations against Yang date back to the 1998-99 school year, when she was in second grade, per the lawsuit.
“The reason that I waited so long to come forward after he was already convicted in 2014 was because I didn’t want the same thing to happen to me again,” she said. “I got punished for him sexually abusing me, and that’s not right. And I had to deal with that all my life, and it still follows me to this day.”
Clovis Unified spokesperson Kelly Avants said the district has not been served the lawsuit.
“If/when we are served with such a suit then we will work with legal counsel to review the allegations and respond accordingly,” Avants said.
The plaintiffs are being represented by PCVA Law.
“What’s been really shocking for us is we start looking for other witnesses to find out how bad is this and who knew what, and that’s why we now represent five people,” said Jason Amala, the lead attorney for the case. “We’ve been contacted by other victims and survivors, and from what we can gather, he was doing this to one or more girls in his classes for 14 years.”
This Clovis Unified lawsuit is one of the latest examples of school districts facing litigation relating to claims of childhood sexual abuses made possible through Assembly Bill 218. Passed in 2019, the law extended the statute of limitations and allowed for people to file such claims as adults.
Following the adoption of AB 218, several districts across the state have been financially impacted. The San Francisco Chronicle reported the Carpinteria Unified School District as being at risk of bankruptcy on account of these types of cases. Los Angeles Unified School District trustees recently voted to issue $500 million in bonds to settle lawsuits brought on under AB 218, according to EdSource.
This story was originally published June 25, 2025 at 3:02 PM.
