Lawsuit alleges that SFHS administrators failed to protect student from repeated sexual harassment by baseball coach

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

ALACHUA, Fla. – A lawsuit filed yesterday alleges that the School Board of Alachua County (SBAC), the City of Alachua (City), and Santa Fe High School (SFHS) administrators knew that former SFHS Baseball Coach Travis Yeckring was behaving inappropriately with female students and failed to investigate or report any of the incidents.

According to the complaint filed by Attorney Bobi Frank, SBAC, the City (because it provides School Resource Officers for SFHS), and the SFHS administrators owe “a duty of care to students who attend SFHS” and are all mandatory reporters of child abuse and neglect under Florida statutes.

The incidents in the complaint occurred during the 2022-23 school year, when the victim was a sophomore. The victim said that Yeckring showed her an explicit image of himself on his cell phone in a hallway at the high school and “smirked” at her. She said she did not invite him to show her the picture, and after the incident, she began suffering from acute anxiety. She tried to avoid Yeckring, but she said that about a week later, she was running late to class and encountered Yeckring in the hallway, where he made “sexually charged statements,” causing her to run to class to get away from him.

The victim said that when she got to her classroom, she told her teacher about both incidents and then went to the front office to file a formal complaint against Yeckring. She said she met with Assistant Principal Mac Rendek and told him about both incidents, and his first reply was, “This is not the first time I have heard this type of thing about Yeckring.” She said she wrote a formal witness statement during the meeting with Rendek.

The victim’s parents told Frank they were never notified about the incidents by any SBAC or City representative.

One or two weeks after the victim met with Rendek, she entered her scheduled class to find that Yeckring was the substitute teacher for that class. She said she was “panic stricken” and called her mother, who advised her to go speak with the Principal.

The victim said she went straight to the office, asked to speak with Principal Timothy Wright, and told him about the incidents. She said that when she finished, Wright said, “We have had some issues in the past like this with Yeckring. This is not the first time I have heard this.”

The victim said that a short time later, Athletic Director Michele Faulk entered the room, and she recounted the incidents again to Faulk.

According to the complaint, a pre-litigation investigation revealed that before the victim’s first incident with Yeckring, SBAC employees and School Resource Officers (SROs) had received “multiple formal reports from numerous children of sexual misconduct by Yeckring.” However, as of the date the complaint was filed (October 30, 2024), Yeckring’s SBAC file “does not contain a single record of any complaint or investigation into sexual harassment, child abuse, or child neglect.”

One allegation mentioned in the complaint was that Faulk had threatened to bench a female student-athlete in the next game if she did not stop referring to Yeckring as “Pedo Yeck.”

The complaint states that at least one SRO “knew, or should have known, of complaints from multiple students who had been sexually harassed or had other sexual acts in nature committed against them by Yeckring and did nothing.” It also alleges that both SBAC employees and SROs failed to document the “repeated complaints by children attending SFHS regarding Yeckring’s sexually inappropriate conduct.”

The complaint alleges that Yeckring was not suspended, investigated, dismissed, punished, or properly supervised after female students reported incidents of sexual harassment to adults who are mandatory reporters due to the nature of their jobs, leaving the victim “in a foreseeable zone of risk.”

Yeckring was placed on administrative suspension only when it became public that he was a suspect in an FDLE criminal investigation into crimes against children who attended SFHS.

According to the complaint, Rendek and Faulk remain employed by SBAC and have never been suspended or investigated for “repeated violations of law.” Wright retired at the end of the last school year.

The complaint charges both defendants with negligent supervision of the victim; charges SBAC with negligent retention of Yeckring, Rendek, Wright, and Faulk; and charges SBAC with negligence for leaving Yeckring unsupervised around the victim, not reporting the incidents to law enforcement or the Department of Children and Families, and not keeping records of the incidents.

The complaint requests a judgment against the defendants to award general and compensatory damages to the victim, permanently enjoin the defendants from future violations of the laws that are specified in the complaint, and award attorney’s fees and costs to the plaintiff.

Frank sent the following statement:

“This is a pivotal time in our community. It is time for the children to be heard and protected.

“The Alachua County School Board and City of Alachua can’t claim ignorance; they were put on notice 6 months ago of these claims and still did nothing.

“The employees that have engaged in a systemic breach of their duties to protect children and report any misconduct that the children endure have no place on our school campuses. It is time for the community to stand up and demand accountability on all levels.

“The laws in place demand swift and severe action against those who don’t put our children above all else.”