VAN NUYS (CNS) - A judge Friday awarded a $50 million default judgment to a teenage girl who sued a former jiujitsu trainer, alleging he sexually molested her when she was one of his students.
The girl is identified only as Jane Doe in the Van Nuys Superior Court lawsuit filed on her behalf by her guardian in November 2020 against 32- year-old Nicollas Welker Araujo, owner of the Overall Brazilian Jiujitsu Academy. The school opened in 2016 in Agoura Hills and has since been closed.
Judge Shirley K. Watkins ordered Araujo to pay half of the $100 million her attorneys sought during Friday's default judgment hearing. Araujo was served with the complaint, but never responded to it, according to the plaintiff's attorneys' court papers.
The teen previously reached a tentative settlement with a second school, Cobrinha Brazilian Jil Jitsu Executive. Cobrinha lawyers maintained in their court papers although Cobrinha allowed Araujo the use of the Cobrinha logo and that a link to Overall was on the Cobrinha website, Cobrinha "had no further arrangement with Overall and lacked any oversight or control over Overall."
But according to the plaintiff's attorneys' court papers, Araujo was "so emboldened by the platform that Cobrinha provided him with its utter lack of any supervision, Araujo would sexually abuse plaintiff in the parking lot serving Cobrinha within mere minutes of when plaintiff and Araujo were in Cobrinha's gym."
In the wake of the tentative accord, the teen's attorneys filed a request for dismissal of Cobrinha as a defendant on Tuesday.
The plaintiff, then 13, began attending Overall Brazilian for jiujitsu training in December 2016 and Araujo often coached the girl at Cobrinha, a jiujitsu studio affiliated with the academy, according to the suit.
That same month, Araujo began grooming Doe with the goal of "manipulating her emotions and taking advantage of her young age so that he could ultimately sexually abuse her," the suit alleged.
Araujo began online adult-level conversations with Doe and gave her extra attention, the suit states. His first improper act was a kiss he gave the girl in February 2017 and that behavior progressed to unlawful sex acts, according to the suit.
"Araujo told plaintiff that because she was a virgin, someone had to teach her how to have sex and that she could not tell anyone," the plaintiff's attorneys stated in their court papers. "From there, Araujo had sexual intercourse with plaintiff on nearly a daily basis."
The abuses continued until October 2018, when Doe was 15 years old and for the first time had the mental strength to tell her family about the abuse, according to the suit, which further states that the teen's relatives called law enforcement and Araujo was arrested in March 2019, charged with felony counts and sentenced in September 2020 to three years in prison.