Former students from a Norwalk middle school filed a lawsuit against the district for failing to remove a teacher who was later convicted of sexually abusing children.
Scott Waln taught at the Los Alisos Middle School until police arrested him on suspicion of sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl in 2022. Two years later, a jury convicted him of molesting several minors. A judge sentenced him to 30 years to life in prison.
“For him, it was just like a game to him,” one of the victims said. “The constant smirks he would have, thinking that he got away with it. A few years later we found out he got the justice I deserved. And I had to realize that I was no longer the little girl I once was.”
The two victims, who were both 11 years old and in sixth grade, claim the Norwalk-La Mirada Unified School District knew about the danger Waln posed to the children and allowed him to continue teaching.
“The failure of the Norwalk-La Mirada School District is what allowed this to happen,” attorney Dominque Boubion said. “Thankfully, the criminal courts could recognize what, apparently, the school district could not. There was a monster on their campus and he deserved to be removed and not kept in confined spaces with children.”