Could El Monte Union High School District officials done anything to prevent former teacher Richard Paul Daniels from sexually abusing a student?

That’s the question at the center of a civil trial that began Friday in downtown Los Angeles.

In 2016, Daniels was sentenced to three years in prison for sexual contact with an Arroyo High School student that occurred three years earlier, when she was 15.

Now the former student is suing the school district, saying officials should have done more to prevent the abuse — especially because Daniels was accused of sexually abusing other students a decade earlier. Those sex-related charges were dismissed in 2005, but Daniels was sentenced to probation for a related incident in which he threw something at a student.

As part of his sentencing in the earlier case, he was ordered by a judge to stay away from the students who accused him of abuse and away from El Monte’s Mountain View High School, where he taught at the time, the woman’s attorney, Michael Carrillo said in opening statements Friday.

The district transferred him to Arroyo, where he would go on to abuse the plaintiff in the current case a decade later, Carrillo said.

“The school district intentionally ignored red flag after red flag,” Carrillo said. “They were more concerned about protecting their image than protecting kids.”

Although the woman, now 20, appeared in court Friday, court documents refer to her as Jane B.M. Doe.

The school district’s attorney argued officials did “exactly what they’re supposed to do” in response to the earlier accusations against Daniels. They had “no choice” but to reinstate him — Daniels was tenured and the state teacher accreditation board recommended a three-day suspension after his court case settled.

“This district does exactly what it is required, you will learn in the evidence, by the law: return him to the classroom,” lawyer Dana John McCune said.

The two sides disagree about the extent of earlier allegations against Daniels, whether it continued at the second school, the response by district administrators — particularly Angelita Gonzales-Hernandez, who was an assistant principal at Mountain View when Daniels was there and the current principal at Arroyo — to those claims and the level of trauma Daniels inflicted on Doe.

Daniels began to abuse Doe when she was in his freshman earth science class. It was during her freshman year that the sexual contact, the incident that led to criminal prosecution, occurred.

The abuse stopped after school let out, but the pain didn’t, Carrillo said: His client cut herself — going so far as to carve the word “broken” into the skin of her inner left thigh — and contemplated suicide.

Daniels allegedly restarted an inappropriate sexual relationship with Doe during her junior year, although criminal charges for those incidents were dismissed by the court in 2016.

Now in college, the woman continues to suffer from post traumatic stress disorder, Carrillo said.

The psychologist Carrillo will call as an expert witness says the woman will need a lifetime of treatment to recover from the trauma, he said.

The district’s psychologist witness though, will argue claims of PTSD are overstated — Doe doesn’t even have PTSD. But even if she does, in the worst cases of the disorder, all that’s needed are eight to 12 sessions over three months, McCune said.

Doe is asking the jury to award damages to cover her medical costs and emotional suffering.

The lawsuit brought by Doe named only the district and some of its officials. But the district filed a cross-complaint that brought Daniels into the case in an attempt to persuade the jury to find him solely responsible for Doe’s claims.

“Paul Daniels? Absolutely at fault,” McCune said. “This young lady, Ms Doe? Absolutely not at fault — let’s make this clear … Mr. Daniels is 100 percent at fault.”