DANVILLE — A basketball coach repeatedly molests one of his players. A principal looks the other way. Years later, the victim musters her courage, reveals the abuse, and justice is done.

Sherinne Wilson desperately wishes the story of her high school trauma could end that way. But it may never happen.

The man she says abused her during the 1980s is now a successful Southern California businessman. Her former principal is well-respected, and living comfortably in retirement. Wilson, meanwhile, endured drug addiction, failed relationships and fractured family ties.

On Tuesday, long after the criminal statute of limitations has passed, Wilson will sue the San Ramon Valley Unified School District and her former principal.

At a time when stories like the endurance of Kristen Cunnane suggest society is finally coming to terms with the horrors of school abuse, Wilson’s lawsuit is a sobering reminder of how much pain still lingers — and how difficult it can be to resolve.

“It’s been a big, dark secret for 30 years,” said Wilson, now 49, married and the mother of five. “I want to know, ‘Why me? Why was I singled out?'”

It took reading this newspaper’s 2012 story about Cunnane — the Cal women’s swim coach who endured a cover-up by the Moraga school district after being abused in middle school by two teachers — for Wilson to find the courage to come forward.

“I read Kristen’s story and saw her strength; it gave me inspiration to tell my story,” Wilson said. “(Before) I felt responsible and ashamed, and I didn’t want anyone to know. I felt it was my fault all those years.”

Unlike Cunnane’s story, no one involved in Wilson’s alleged abuse and cover-up has been to jail. There haven’t been any arrests. Police and prosecutors who investigated her allegations in 2012 say any chance of criminal prosecution has been lost over time.

Wilson filed an early version of a lawsuit last week without naming any defendants. On Friday, the court authorized her to proceed with a $15 million lawsuit against the district and former San Ramon Valley High Principal James Henderson over allegations that her high school basketball coach and teacher, Leland Sandler, sexually abused her during her last two years on campus, and that Henderson failed to report the allegations to authorities as required by law. Sandler is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

After Wilson’s parents found out about Sandler and their daughter, Henderson concocted a plan to allow the coach to finish the season and leave the school, Wilson alleged.

“I feel like the school district should be held accountable for their actions,” said Wilson, who gave permission to publish her full name. “Changes will hopefully be made, and it will help me heal.”

Neither Sandler, his attorney nor Henderson returned multiple requests for comment.

Sandler also refused to talk to Danville police investigators when they called in August 2012. Instead, his then-attorney, David Thompson, called investigator Allan Shields, who told the attorney that he wanted to speak with his client regarding an old criminal case that “appeared to be outside the statute of limitations.”

In response, Thompson said, “… assuming for the moment it’s … (an) unfounded or founded charge of inappropriate contact, (there is) an eight-year statute on the civil side.”

In his police report, Shields noted that he hadn’t told Sandler or Thompson the nature of the case he was investigating.

About a week later, Shields noted in his report, Thompson called back and said his client did not want to make a statement.

Groomed for abuse?

Wilson tells this story:

She met Sandler in 1980, when she was a 15-year-old freshman, tall and athletic. The 28-year-old Sandler promoted her to the varsity squad and gave her special treatment. While she got new equipment, her teammates settled for hand-me-downs.

He began talking with her about sex and marijuana — adult themes that the teenager, engulfed in puberty, with pimples, frizzy hair and braces, knew little about. Wilson, a devout Mormon, said she remembered writing in her diary how disappointed she was in him.

Still, by summer 1982, Sandler first kissed her after they attended a Temple Pageant in the Oakland hills, and on Aug. 12, 1982, Wilson said, the pair had intercourse in the hot tub at her family’s Danville home while watching a meteor shower. Sandler was 29, and she was 16.

Inexperienced, Wilson said she called medical hotlines, pressing automated response numbers to try to learn about sex and male anatomy. She began marking codes on her calendar: a star for days she had sex with Sandler and an octagon on days he gave her drugs, often cocaine.

Her mother, who had grown suspicious of her daughter’s close relationship with her coach, eventually found birth control pills and explicit letters from Sandler under her daughter’s dresser, Wilson’s parents said in an interview.

“Sherinne was brainwashed and infatuated,” Wilson’s father, David Barlow, said. “He conned us, too.”

Days after the discovery, Wilson’s parents met Henderson and a sobbing Sandler in the principal’s office, where the coach admitted to everything, Barlow said. The young parents said they were “coerced and duped” by Henderson into allowing Sandler to stay the rest of the season and not go to police.

“We, as her parents, we wanted to protect her, and we didn’t want the whole world to know about it,” Wilson’s mother, Jan Barlow, said. “We didn’t make the right decision.”

The abuse didn’t end with the agreement, and the principal knew it, Wilson said, because he walked in on them having sex in the school gym. “I remember making eye contact with him,” Wilson said. “I don’t know what was in his mind, but he turned around, walked out and closed the door.”

When Sandler left after the season and took a job at Beverly Hills High School, Wilson blamed herself for his dismissal. She said their relationship continued while Wilson played basketball on scholarship at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, until she finally ended it after meeting her first husband.

Not the only victim

What Wilson didn’t know was that months after Sandler’s departure, San Ramon Valley High football coach John Callahan began sexually abusing a 15-year-old freshman girl. That girl later sued Principal Henderson and the school district, claiming the principal was also alerted to her abuse but did nothing.

Like Sandler, the football coach quietly left the Danville campus at the end of the 1985-86 school year and got a job elsewhere. Eventually, in May 1989, Callahan pleaded no contest to 12 counts of statutory rape and was sentenced to 18 months in jail.

The district said there are no school records detailing the Sandler and Callahan abuse allegations.

“We are saddened to learn of this allegation and deeply concerned by it,” said Elizabeth Graswich, district spokeswoman, declining to comment on the ongoing legal matter and any personnel decisions. “Our district takes all reports of sexual abuse, past or present, very seriously. The safety of our students is our top priority.”

According to newspaper stories, Henderson was moved against his wishes into a district job shortly after the Callahan incident, eventually retiring to Danville.

Sandler started The Sandler Group in Del Mar, near San Diego, offering training and leadership skills for senior executives, according to the company’s website.

Wilson, however, has struggled.

Post-traumatic stress

“I don’t have any friends. I don’t let anyone very close,” said Wilson, who lives in Santa Rosa. “Before I met (Sandler), not to brag, but I was the most popular, very athletic. … I had friends coming out of my ears.”

Wilson said she was particularly close to her father as a child, but Sandler ended that.

“Through the years, my father and I struggled and tried to find what we had when I was 14,” she said. “For some reason, we haven’t. We spent most of my adult life arguing.”

Wilson works as a recreation supervisor and said she has worked hard not to resent her parents for their decisions, but she can’t really let go. To this day, she wonders how her father and mother could continue attending basketball games while their daughter was coached by her alleged molester.

Since reading Cunnane’s story, Wilson said she began therapy and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“You can’t forget it,” she said. “You can put in back of mind, but you live with it every day.”

Contact Matthias Gafni at 925-952-5026. Follow him at Twitter.com/mgafni.