Water polo rising star terrorized black player with N-word insults and repeatedly sexually assaulted him: Lawsuit

A star student water polo player racially abused a black teammate and subjected him to a months-long campaign of sexual assault at their $50,000-a-year LA private school, according to a new lawsuit.Lucca van der Woude called Aidan Romain, both now 18, racial slurs daily, whipped him with ropes, and made slavery references, while also digitally penetrating him on campus, according to the legal complaint filed against van der Woude, Harvard-Westlake School, school president Richard B Commons, and water polo coach Jack Grover.The lawsuit, filed Friday at Los Angeles County Superior Court, alleges van der Woude and two other teammates repeatedly subjected Romain, who was a minor at the time, to racist and sexual abuse between August 2022 and February 2024.Van der Woude, who was named the Orange County player of the year by the Orange County Daily Register in December 2024 and was a UCLA commit, was unable to be reached for comment, and no attorneys for him are listed in the lawsuit.The California Post approached van der Woude’s family and most recent water polo coach for comment, but did not immediately hear back.Grover and Commons also did not respond immediately to requests for comment.Harvard-Westlake, which has annual fees of $52,500, allegedly failed to report, investigate, or take protective measures after being told about the reported abuse, according to the lawsuit.Van der Woude and a teammate “constantly dehumanized” Romain by a short form of the slur ‘n—–r’ … virtually every single day for five months,” the lawsuit states.Romain’s alleged nightmare started on the first day of practice when he was 14, and the only freshman called up to play with the varsity water polo team, he wrote in an impact statement.The alleged abuse, which included jokes that Romain was the team’s “secret weapon” during night games because his skin was too dark for opponents to see, often happened in front of Harvard-Westlake staff without any action being ta...