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An 18-year-old Black water polo player filed a lawsuit against one of Los Angeles’s most elite private schools last week, alleging he was sexually assaulted and racially harassed by teammates for years while school staff failed to intervene.
Aidan Romain is accusing Harvard-Westlake school in Studio City; its president, Richard Commons; the head of the boys’ water polo program, Jack Grover; and former teammate Lucca van der Woude of allowing a “culture of harassment” within the elite program. The lawsuit was filed on 27 February in Los Angeles superior court.
The allegations strike at the heart of one of southern California’s most prominent private schools and a highly competitive high school water polo program. In the lawsuit, Romain and his family argue that school officials ignored or minimized reports of abuse to protect the team and one of its star players: Van der Woude.
“Despite repeated, direct disclosures of sexual assault, the school failed to report the abuse, failed to remove the perpetrator, and instead retaliated against the victim,” reads the complaint.
Romain said the abuse began in August 2022 when he was 14 years old and the only freshman on the varsity team. According to the complaint, Van der Woude allegedly repeatedly digitally penetrated him in locations around campus, including the pool, locker room, showers, weight room and a staircase. The reported harassment, which allegedly involved forcibly and without consent touching Romain’s genitals, lasted through January 2024.
According to the complaint, Romain also endured “racial slurs, racially-charged comments, and racist attacks” by his teammates.
“Harvard-Westlake will not offer specific comment other than to say that it unequivocally disputes many of the allegations in the lawsuit because they mischaracterize facts and the school’s actions,” the school said in a statement. “The school treated reports of inappropriate behavior in its water polo program with urgency and seriousness, promptly initiating an investigation and complying with its mandatory reporting obligations. The school also cooperated completely with law enforcement.”
The lawsuit raises a major scandal for Harvard-Westlake, a much-sought-after school. Notable celebrities, including Oscar-winning star Jamie Lee Curtis and actor Jake Gyllenhaal, have attended the school, which currently has a tuition of $54,900 a year. According to Niche, a website that ranks K-12 schools, Harvard-Westlake is currently among the top five private schools in the Los Angeles area.
The Orange County Register first reported the story. Van der Woude has denied the allegations. In a statement to the Guardian, Keith Bremer, an attorney for Van der Woude, said that he “denies each and every allegation made against him”.
The statement adds: “Lucca has conducted himself with integrity throughout his academic and athletic career, and he will not allow false accusations to define him now and/or in the future.”
The lawsuit recounts some of the alleged racist and harassing behavior Romain faced. Van Der Woude and teammate Connor Kim allegedly whipped Romain in the weight room “in a re-enactment of slavery” while calling him racial slurs, according to the complaint. This reportedly occurred nearly every day for about five months.
The complaint also alleges that Romain faced harassment from other teammates. In one instance, he “found himself in a contentious situation when a teammate, BB, entered the shower area and demanded access to his stall”. Romain refused, and the teammate “became incensed” and “proceeded to assault Plaintiff, grabbing him by the shoulder and delivering blows to his back, buttocks, and genitals. The attack escalated and the teammate forcefully grabbed Plaintiff’s penis while simultaneously striking him in the testicles.”
Romain’s parents reported this assault to Grover and, according to the complaint, his first response was to ask whether they thought their son might be lying. The parents then reported the assault to school heads, and the lawsuit alleges that the school denied ever receiving any report from Romain’s parents about the sexual assault. One of the school’s coaches instead suspended both Romain and the other student for four games.
“You discover the character of an institution in the moment when the vulnerable ask for help,” Daniel Watkins, an attorney for Romain, told the Guardian. “Harvard-Westlake met that moment with silence – and then tried to whitewash the truth.”
Van Der Woude was arrested by the Los Angeles police department in February 2024 while he was on campus during school hours, reads the complaint.
“Harvard-Westlake subsequently banned him from the campus, prohibited him from playing water polo at Harvard-Westlake, and required him to write an ‘apology letter,’ which if he wrote, he never sent to Plaintiff,” the complaint says.
Harvard-Westlake helped facilitate Van Der Woude’s transfer to Newport Harbor high school in Newport Beach, according to the suit, by allegedly concealing on official paperwork that he had been the subject of disciplinary proceedings.
Van Der Woude admitted in juvenile court to sexual penetration of a minor as part of a plea agreement in November 2024, according to reporting cited in the complaint. In January 2025, the Los Angeles county probation department formally identified Romain as a victim in the case. A juvenile court judge later ordered Van Der Woude and his parents to pay more than $49,000 in restitution to partially cover Romain’s legal costs.
California is known as a hub for water polo talent in the United States, with three-quarters of all high school players in the country living in the state.
Harvard-Westlake sits near the center of that hub. The school has $832m in gross assets, according to ProPublica’s non-profit explorer. The campus is home to a 50-meter competition pool imported from Mantua, Italy, according to Vanity Fair, and the school is preparing to open a new $200m athletic complex that will include a state-of-the-art aquatics center.
