SANTA CRUZ — The Santa Cruz County community recently fought hard to keep a sexual predator out of its jurisdictional limits. All the while, renowned track and cross country coach John Rembao lived out of his Ben Lomond home — waiting, quietly, to allegedly return to a 30-year stint of grooming and sexually harassing and abusing young women.
On Aug. 17, 2020, The U.S. Center for SafeSport — a nonprofit organization that aims to keep athletes safe and healthy in their careers — issued Rembao a suspension that prevented him from coaching for two years and under watch after his return for three years.
The coach, who has known U.S. Olympic-level prestige, tried to appeal the suspension. SafeSport did not overturn it. Today, Rembao is listed in the organization’s Centralized Discipline Database as being punished for “Sexual Misconduct; Intimate Relationship – involving a Power Imbalance; Inappropriate Conduct.”
Rembao was alerted of his suspension in his eighth year at UC Santa Cruz in an administrative role — a contrast to his former sports-involved positions at Stanford University (2005 to 2007) and University of California-Berkeley (2007 to 2011). UC Santa Cruz Spokesperson Scott Hernandez-Jason said that when the university learned of serious allegations “relating to his prior employment,” Rembao was placed on leave. The coach’s LinkedIn said he did not exit his position on campus for good until one year after the report was shared with involved parties.
Rembao, who grew up in Santa Cruz, returned to privately coach high school track stars and grown Olympic hopefuls at the students’ schools that would allow him use of their facilities. He did so after years of moving from university to university in the Division I circuit. Between 2015 and 2019, the coach primarily mentored female minors who attended San Lorenzo Valley, Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley and Los Gatos high schools. He boasted the affiliations of D1 Athletics, Santa Cruz Track Club and MileUSA.
Representatives of each school’s district responded to inquiries from the Sentinel around whether Rembao would be allowed to come back and seek connections with their establishments or athletes after his suspension.
“I was able to confirm that we did rent our facilities to the Santa Cruz Track Club and UCSC between 2015 and 2019. Mr. Rembao’s name is not a part of the facilities rental information,” Santa Cruz City Schools Superintendent Kris Munro said in an email.
Munro explained that none of the school districts have control over who can rent public facilities so long as they meet their obligations because of the Civic Center Act.
“As authorized under the Civic Center Act, public school facilities are made available for rent to other entities who provide insurance and meet the requirements. We do not rent the facilities to make a profit only to recover costs as per the Civic Center Act. We also would not have any information about the staff of any of these independent programs,” she wrote.
Scotts Valley Unified School District Superintendent Tanya Krause said that Rembao had never been a paid coach or volunteer or filed facility use agreements at Scotts Valley High School. Scotts Valley Unified takes each request case by case, requiring individual applicants seeking to be with students to go through fingerprint clearance and proof of insurance.
San Lorenzo Valley Unified School District Superintendent Christopher Schiermeyer said his district showed no records of renting their fields to Rembao or his private coaching companies. He did, however, have a record of Rembao using district fields to train adult high jumpers without an approved facility use form in October 2020 — months after his final SafeSport suspension.
“District staff told Mr. Rembao that he must discontinue using district fields effective immediately. Staff report Mr. Rembao has not used the district fields to privately train since that conversation,” Schiermeyer said.
The Sentinel was unable, after multiple tries, to get in contact with USA Track and Field to find out whether his coaching of a subgroup unrelated to his allegations is a violation of his suspension.
Just one school district responded with information around their high school’s code of conduct for athletic personnel as well as preventative measures around inappropriate behavior between student-athletes and athletic personnel: Rembao’s most recent athletic institution — Los Gatos High School.
“Prior to his hiring as a coach at Los Gatos High School, John Rembao went through an extensive background check administered by both the state and federal justice departments. In both instances, Rembao’s background check cleared him to work in a school setting,” said a public relations officer for the district[. “Mr. Rembao coached at Los Gatos High School during the spring 2018 and spring 2019 track seasons but was not employed with us… when we learned of the SafeSport suspension through media reports.”
The spokesperson said that the district invests in annual training for students, staff and coaches to ensure they all understand the professional lines that must be upheld to serve students. Comeback or cutoff
Rembao is poised to fully resume his activities in 2022″ unless a judge rules on the side of three athletes from his past.
Rembao has only admitted to details that are not damning, such as his professional track record, with two exceptions: That he massaged one of the athletes in his home and that he commented on her appearance in photos. Rembao’s attorney, Howard Jacobs, referred the Sentinel back to the court documents in which his client repeatedly maintained his innocence.
“I don’t know how much benefit there would be to telling him or me what they said and (John) saying that it didn’t happen,” Jacobs said upon finding out the publication had spoken to the plaintiffs. “I’m surprised they are wanting to litigate this in the press since they brought the lawsuit, but he’s not going to do that.”
Rembao then emailed the Sentinel himself.
“I maintain I did not groom, sexually harass or assault these women. I will continue to pursue this case to trial if necessary to prove my innocence,” he signed with his regards.
In March 2020, record breakers Erin Aldrich-Shean, Jessica Johnson and Londa Bevins filed a class-action lawsuit against their old coach, the NCAA and the NCAA Board of Directors in the Northern District of California, San Jose Division. Rembao was then slapped with an interim suspension in late 2019 before his final suspension in mid-2020.
Despite its national presence, the court split the case so that the NCAA could fight in its home state of Indiana — leaving a second case against Rembao where the case was first heard. As a result, the women’s representation at Fegan Scott LLC, led by attorney Lynn Ellenberger, were left to convince two judges instead of one that, in their own ways, the defendants played a part in a system that failed young, impressionable versions of Aldrich-Shean, Johnson and Bevins.
The NCAA did not respond to multiple requests for comment about its case.
In the lawsuit against Rembao, Ellenberger and her team go into great detail about the ways in which the coach allegedly preyed on girls over whom he held a power dynamic. All three alleged stories begin the same way: Rembao realizes the girl’s potential at a training when she is not yet of-age. He praises her and gets involved in her personal life. Then, once a comfortability and trust forms, he batters, assaults and even holds the girl captive. If she pulls back, he degrades and stalks her. Erin Aldrich-Shean poses for high school portraits. Her lawyers allege that Rembao picked through her photos and chose which ones he liked best, calling the muscle on the side of her leg portrayed in the photo “super sexy.” (Courtesy of Fegan Scott)
According to the plaintiffs’ amended complaint, Rembao inappropriately commented about Aldrich-Shean, a volleyball player and a high jumper, before she even graduated from high school in the late ’90s. Aldrich-Shean’s lawyers detail that when they traveled together to a world junior championship in Australia her senior year, Rembao allegedly fondled her under the blanket on the way there. He promised to divorce his wife who he met when he was a coach and she was an Olympic athlete in 1992; they married despite his joking to those he tells the story that “she was never interested in him.”
Upon her arrival at University of Arizona, their relationship simulated that of a boyfriend-girlfriend dynamic despite his marital status. This continued until her roommate caught them having sex in her freshman dorm room. Aldrich-Shean followed him to the University of Texas-Austin. Because of the relationship, she suffered depression, anxiety and lifelong fertility issues because of Rembao’s allegedly obsessive training and dietary restrictions. John Rembao leans in close to Erin Aldrich-Shean at the World Junior Championships in Sydney, Australia in 1996. Aldrich-Shean and her lawyers allege in the lawsuit against Rembao that on the flight to the competition, the coach fondled the high school senior under her blanket without her permission. She froze up and he joked about joining the “mile-high club,” attorneys outlined. They also allege he offered to move them to the country and leave his wife in order to do so. (Courtesy of Fegan Scott)
The complaint discusses how Johnson, Rembao’s second survivor, was recruited to UT-Austin just before the millennium because of Rembao’s tenure and was allegedly told that Rembao’s compliments had to stay between the two of them.
“Trust is important to me, loyalty too. I will return it the way I receive it,” Johnson claims he said.
Johnson recalled Rembao’s stalking behavior that alienated her from her friends and her teammates.
“Every now and then I would get up in the night and see where he was,” Johnson admitted to this publication this month about her paranoia. “I followed him (online) at one point… I was floored at the mere fact he landed at high schools… I was surprised after Me Too that rules and regulations (hadn’t) been put into place.” Jessica Johnson competes in a high jump competition for her high school team in Texas. Johnson met John Rembao when she was invited to the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista during her freshman year of high school. (Courtesy of Fegan Scott)
When she developed an ankle injury, Johnson was relieved, she said in her remarks and in an interview with the Sentinel. Their relationship had caused her depression, insomnia and an eating disorder. Later, she began cutting and was urged to attend counseling.
Bevins, Johnson’s teammate on the UT-Austin track team, thought she was the only one being allegedly groomed, harassed and abused by her coach. But when she found Johnson crying in the locker room one day, they came to the realization they needed to leave and take their peers with them. Both Bevins and Johnson transferred to University of Arkansas. Johnson and her lawyers allege that Rembao used her high school years for grooming purposes and convinced her, with the help of his employer University of Texas-Austin winning the national championship in track and field her senior year, to commit to the university. Plaintiffs provided a piece of mail from Rembao to Johnson when she was still a minor which states on the back: “Only open if you are Miss America (At least in the future!)” (Courtesy of Fegan Scott)
Johnson submitted a formal complaint to UT-Austin before her departure, lawyers wrote, and Rembao allegedly admitted to a majority of the sexual misconduct. However, the school stood by Rembao and found his actions to be “boorish.” When Johnson arrived in Arkansas, her new coach knew that her old one had a reputation, the complaint adds. That was 21 years ago.
Bevins, a cross country, indoor and outdoor track student-athlete, was recruited by Rembao even though she was injured prior to her freshman year of college. When Bevins didn’t take her time at UT-Austin as seriously as Rembao wanted in the beginning, he toyed with her emotions, one day making her feel like the MVP and the next a failure. Londa Bevins stands between her teammates at a competition in 1999, looking away from the camera. Plaintiffs allege that when Bevins trained under Rembao, he called her into his office for “meetings” that turned into sessions of long, uncomfortable hugs. The meetings sometimes included Rembao touching her long hair, Bevins’ lawyers alleged, which bothered her enough to cut it off. (Courtesy of Fegan Scott)
As first described by Johnson in the complaint, Rembao allegedly called meetings to draw Bevins close, too, and, in more than one instance, rub his erection against her. Sometimes he touched her hair; she cut it so he would stop. As a result of his alleged abuse Bevins fought internally with shame, guilt and anxiety attacks, the complaint filed by the plaintiffs states. When she competed against teams he coached later at Southern Methodist University (2001 to 2005), she became ill.
Rembao has testified in a closed proceeding, but in 2022 he will have to give his account in a public setting — in front of a jury trial, an event expected to last three to five days, a recent case management document obtained through public records database PACER explained. Londa Bevins, wearing a University of Arkansas uniform on the right-hand side of the shot, runs one of her final races. Bevins was later invited to a race in Sacramento in 2004 that could have qualified her for the United States Olympic Team, but she allegedly saw Rembao at the event and experienced distress and trauma from her memories of him. (Courtesy of Fegan Scott)
Because of the likelihood of being deposed for the NCAA court case, both parties are currently on a requested leave. They will gather and submit discovery, class expert reports and more before an anticipated hearing on the women’s request for class action certification on May 12. That certification will help define the litigation process and the group of individuals affected by the lawsuit. In this case, Aldrich, Johnson, Bevins and their attorneys seek to define the class as “All female student-athletes who were coached by John Rembao.”
“Class certification is a pivotal decision in a class action case. In order for a case to be afforded class action treatment the court must certify a class, provided the proposed members satisfy the requirements for certification. Certification thus directs the course of subsequent litigation both in strategy and procedure, and can even extinguish the action altogether if the motion for certification is denied,” the Judicial Council of California states in a report called “Class Certification in California.” Creating change
There are two generations of student-athletes that must today make peace with the charges presented against Rembao: The women who claim he manipulated them, and those who are beginning to wonder whether he could have. Both are interested in the protection of future female high school athletes and the assurance that these acts never happen again.
“Knowing he could be back out there makes me sick,” Johnson said this month of the possibility Rembao could be found innocent. “I can picture what the (future) girls will be like. I know his type, what their bodies will look like … I am terrified for high jumpers, I guess because I’m one of them. They’re tall, thin, long-haired girls. A lot of the time they’re good students and good athletes, people with high goals. That’s what he’s looking for.”
After being burned by the UT-Austin investigation, Johnson describes herself as jaded. She wanted to hold on to the idea that things could get better, especially because she has young daughters who she has chosen to tell about her experience so that they learn from it. But after Indiana District Judge James R. Sweeney granted the NCAA’s motion to dismiss in the Indiana case, Johnson found herself to be right.
“I dare to be optimistic but my fallback is that until the NCAA’s hand is forced by a legal or financial consequence, they will never have the motivation or the reason to do it,” Johnson said of the idea of writing and enforcing literature on relationships between student-athletes and personnel. “But it won’t stop here with us.”
Sweeney dismantled the plaintiff’s case against the NCAA, pointing to the lack of timeliness around the allegations as well as the case law used to legitimize them as weaknesses.
“The Court is sympathetic to Ms. Aldrich’s plight, finding the abuse she suffered to be deplorable. But the law in Indiana is to determine when a plaintiff could ascertain some damage. Given the facts here, a reasonable person would have understood that they were injured by another,” Sweeney wrote in his opinion before moving on to arguments of the other survivors.
Attorneys at Fegan Scott, who have filed a notice of appeal in the lawsuit against the NCAA and its board, argue that there is a conspiracy of silence that fuels these alleged decades-long crime sprees because of the NCAA’s interest in protecting their own. This good ol’ boys club mentality is why the gut wrenching stories of Jerry Sandusky and Larry Nassar’s mistreatment of their athletes exist, Ellenberger and her peers say in the complaint. A bubble is built around them and a burden of proof around student-athletes.
Johnson experienced the bubble when she graduated from University of Arkansas as an NCAA Woman of the Year. When she attended an event for female student-athletes in Indianapolis, she shared what had happened to her and her interest in keeping it from happening to any other woman. Her comments were ignored by fellow colleagues and NCAA representatives and the conversation quickly moved on. She felt she had been dismissed.
Today, however, she finds comrades in Aldrich-Shean, who now speaks publicly on her social media about finding justice, and Summer-Solstice Thomas, another NCAA Woman of the Year nominee nearly two decades her junior that recently wrote about her fear of what could have been with Rembao for Fortune. After coming forward with the lawsuit, Johnson is receiving virtual support from survivors of other track and field coaches as well as track and field coaches who want to stop the abuse.
“We were young, we trained with him from the ages of 15 to 18,” Thomas, the 23-year-old Santa Cruz High School graduate, said to the Sentinel. “I wouldn’t be surprised if we were groomed, but I couldn’t even recognize it if I looked back.”
Thomas said that she became habituated to the way that Rembao coached, not thinking anything of how intimate and affectionate he was with his student-athletes. It wasn’t until she went to college and had different coaches that Thomas noticed what she called a “stark difference.” Three local female athletes, blurred out for privacy purposes, stand together in front of a high jump bar and in 2017. Rembao kept the image without a caption as his “cover photo” on Facebook for two years. Previously his cover photo was a shot of Rembao one of the same athletes, a student who was a minor at the time. (Courtesy of Facebook)
“(Rembao) was close to all of us, he knew the details about our personal lives and asked us under the guise of distraction. He had a lot more control over our food and talked to us all the time about what we were eating and how much we weighed. Those are controlling behaviors,” she said. “He was way more physical than any of my college coaches were, putting us into certain positions. He put his hands on our hips, adjusting us there, and he hugged us all the time.”
Thomas said that two assets in her former environment may have saved her from abuse: Olympic hopefuls in their mid-20s that would train with the teenagers and Rembao waiting until the girls were 18 to become exceedingly physical with them.
“When you get to college, you have a choice that may have helped you commit to the school, may hold your scholarship, may determine what classes you take around your training,” Johnson said of the authority collegiate coaches hold, such as the advantage of being able to help athletes secure scholarships. “They have more control over you than a boss because they have the ability to give and the ability to take away.
Thomas agreed, commenting that there is an allure to an individual who can take an athlete wherever they want to go. Rembao’s connections to other high school and collegiate coaches are beneficial in each direction, as they find him clients and he offers them top prospects. After all, Thomas’s high school coaches referred her to Rembao, a private instructor.
“He made (my friends) believe he was the ticket to college. He got (one) into Cal Poly and he offered me Stanford, Berkeley,” Thomas claimed. “We used to talk about how lucky we were.”
The Sentinel asked all of the higher academic institutions that formerly employed or endorsed the coaching of Rembao whether any coaches are still connected to the defendant and would, subsequently, continue to refer athletes to him.
“Arizona Athletics staff does not refer student-athletes to the individual in question,” responded Matt Ensor of the University of Arizona Athletics Department, where Olympian Elizabeth Patterson was a student-athlete and was directed to Rembao by one of her former coaches because of the coach’s employment from 1994 to 1997.
UT-Austin Vice President & Athletics Director Chris Del Conte responded similarly.
“The behavior alleged in this story is disturbing. Our current coaches and staff know that such behavior is totally unacceptable and will not be tolerated at the University of Texas,” Del Conte concluded after describing the man his university employed from 1997 to 2001.
The University of California, Berkeley, like UT-Austin, did not promise staff would not refer female student-athletes to Rembao in the future.
“Campus prevention and response efforts have increased in recent years. All university staff and all students are required to complete sexual harassment and sexual violence prevention training. In addition the athletic department sponsors supplementary formal training for coaches, staff and student-athletes in sexual violence awareness and prevention, bystander intervention, and campus reporting procedures,” Cal’s Executive Senior Associate Athletic Director Jenny Simon-O’Neill said.
California Polytechnic State University – San Luis Obispo, denied any claims that Rembao still had an in at the university.
“Our track and field director does not have any ties to John Rembao, and Rembao has not helped us recruit. We are not aware of anyone on our roster with any ties to him either,” said Cal Poly Communications Specialist Cynthia Lambert. Reassigning responsibility
Ellenberger, who has now spent years pulling together a case against one of the most famous institutions in the United States, says that the narratives of Aldrich-Shean, Johnson and Bevins are examples of why the NCAA should have a centralized reporting place where those making an allegation should be served by an independent body — a concept USA Track and Field and U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee’s SafeSport is trying to carry out.
“They’re understaffed and facing a title wave of claims and allegations,” she said. “SafeSport also only focuses on sexual abuse. There are many types of abuse out there that occur between student-athletes and coaches. If you’re an organization with the wealth and power the NCAA has, you have the ability to fix it.”
The NCAA does not agree. In fact, months after Rembao was called to appear in court for his allegations, the sports giant filed a brief in support of the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee that asserted the committee does not have a legal duty to protect its athletes from sexual harassment and abuse. Lawyers for the NCAA acknowledged that if accepted, the verdict would affect the organization itself too.
The brief bore a striking resemblance to the NCAA’s argument that persuaded Sweeney to acquit it of any responsibility for the abuse.
“The NCAA asked the court to find that it had no duty to protect student athletes from abuse like this,” Ellenberger summarized. How to help
From student-athletes that lived through it, there are three things that can be done to help stop the abuse of both female and male student athletes. The first, Thomas suggested, is the NCAA meeting the asks made of its organization in the lawsuit. The second, Johnson suggested, is loved ones of student-athletes paying attention to their behavior. The third, Thomas suggested, is that athletic organizations center and share resources dedicated to regulating student-athlete and personnel relationships.
Plaintiffs asked the NCAA to prohibit romantic relationships between student-athletes and athletic staff. They also asked that investigations of abusive conduct be done by a third party and that those investigations be recorded into a centralized system. Finally, plaintiffs asked for the mandate of sexual assault training for both coaches and athletes that focuses not only on peer abuse but health boundaries between student-athletes and their authority figures.
“This is a call to action. Break the silence. Insist the NCAA protect our knobby-elbowed, uncoordinated, vulnerable daughters, sisters, and friends. Demand that they protect the victim I could have been,” Thomas pleaded in her Fortune essay after outlining the demands.
Johnson advised that it’s a classic strategy for predators to try to isolate their victims. This is what happened to her, and how she disconnected from reality and came to trust Rembao, she alleged. Individuals who know a student-athlete should watch them for emotional or physical changes and carefully approach the athlete about their wellbeing if they notice something is different.
“He’d talk a lot about loyalty but what it came down to was that he didn’t want anybody talking,” she said. “I shut down my communication, but I was a new student that hadn’t built a lot of relationships. I fell through the cracks. But my parents noticed and that’s how it came to a head.”
People who care about student-athletes can also elevate the voices that want to evoke a safe environment for them, Thomas said. For example, Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a civil rights lawyer, an abuse survivor and an activist, started an entity called Champion Women that is dedicated to holding powerful people and their employers accountable. The Drake Group, created to “defend academic integrity” according to its website, has a model statement on the professional conduct of coaches. Safe4Athletes, a nonprofit organization that offers educational content on coaching policies that prevent abuse to local youth sports clubs, is another place to turn to, Thomas said.
“Certainly, this won’t solve everything, but even if we have a few clubs or schools institute safer norms or conduct policies then at least some kids will be aware of the boundaries they deserve and help educate others,” Thomas offered in an email.
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