Key Points

  • The Fourth Appellate District, Division Three, affirmed an order granting Karen Rose's anti-SLAPP motion and striking slander per se claims by John, Terri and Christopher Sellars.
  • Rose's podcast statements accusing her former ballet teacher of sexual abuse were made in a public forum in connection with an issue of public interest under Code of Civil Procedure section 425.16, subdivision (e)(3).
  • In the first appellate discussion of Civil Code section 47.1, the court held that the qualified privilege covers a survivor's statements about other alleged victims' similar experiences with the same actor, not just her own assault.
  • The court held that a speaker's enduring emotional response to her alleged assault does not show malice; some wrongful intent separate from the desire to expose the assault and seek justice is required, and the court invited the Legislature to define it.
  • The wife's and son's claims failed because none of Rose's statements accused them of a crime; Rose was awarded costs and appellate attorney fees, with the amount to be set on remand.

A California appeals court has upheld the dismissal of a slander suit that an Orange County ballet teacher and his family brought against a onetime student who accused him on a podcast of sexually abusing her and other young dancers. The decision is the first by a California appellate court to interpret a law, in effect since 2024, that protects sexual assault survivors who speak publicly about their experiences.

A three-judge panel of the Fourth Appellate District, Division Three, unanimously affirmed an order striking the complaint that John Sellars, his wife, Terri Sellars, and their son, Christopher Sellars, filed against Karen Rose. Justice Scott wrote the opinion, filed Nov. 9, joined by Acting Presiding Justice Moore and Justice Servino. The panel awarded Rose her costs and her attorney fees on appeal.

The court said it published the opinion because no other appellate court in the state had yet discussed Civil Code section 47.1, which took effect in 2024. "We construe the statute broadly to cover not only the speaker's statements about her own alleged sexual assault, but also her statements about other alleged victims' similar experiences with the same actor," Scott wrote. The panel also held that a survivor's lasting emotional reaction to an alleged assault does not, on its own, show the malice that removes the law's protection.

According to the opinion, John Sellars, a former professional dancer, taught ballet at and later owned Orange County Dance Center in Huntington Beach. Rose has said that she began classes with him in 1978, at age 11, and that he later sexually abused and raped her, at the studio and on his boat, until she quit at about 15 or 16. The Sellarses denied that any abuse occurred.

In the mid-1980s, Sellars was criminally charged with oral copulation of a different teenage student and was acquitted after a three-week trial that the Los Angeles Times covered. After the Legislature revived certain time-barred claims for childhood sexual assault, Rose and three other women sued Sellars and the studio.

In 2024, Rose appeared on four episodes of a podcast hosted by a childhood friend who had also danced at the studio. She described how Sellars had groomed, molested and assaulted her and other students, and she named five other alleged victims. She also made disparaging remarks about Terri and Christopher Sellars. Each family member then sued her for slander per se, which under California law includes a false and unprivileged spoken statement that charges a person with a crime.

Rose responded with an anti-SLAPP motion. Under that statute, a defendant must first show that the claims arise from protected activity, and the burden then shifts to the plaintiff to show a probability of prevailing. Orange County Superior Court Judge Bradley Erdosi granted the motion in what the appeals court called "a well-reasoned, seven-page minute order."

On appeal, the Sellarses conceded that the podcast was a public forum. The panel held that Rose's statements also concerned an issue of public interest, joining courts that have held that "accusations of inappropriate sexual relations between minors and adults involved in youth activities are 'a matter of public interest.'" The family had argued that the allegations were decades old and had ended in acquittal. "But as we read the record, John was acquitted in connection with only one alleged victim," Scott wrote.

The court found that some of Rose's remarks, such as calling Sellars "sick" and saying she would not "trust him with the dog," were hyperbole that could not support a slander claim. Her statements that he was a "pedophile" who raped her and other students did accuse him of crimes, and the family had offered evidence that the accusations were false. But the law of slander also requires that a statement be unprivileged, and the panel held that Sellars could not make that showing.

Section 47.1 creates a qualified privilege for communications made "without malice" by a person about a sexual assault, so long as the speaker had a reasonable basis to file a complaint. Rose met that condition, the court said, in part because a licensed mental health practitioner had issued a certificate of merit, a filing required before her civil suit could proceed.

The family argued that the statute covers only the speaker's own assault, not her claims about other victims. The panel disagreed, pointing to the statute's "related to" wording and to its roots in the #MeToo movement. Rose's account of other victims was "related to" her own experience "because it suggests John systematically abused young dancers like her, corroborating her own account," Scott wrote.

The family also argued that Rose acted with malice, citing her 2023 statement to the Orange County Register that the abuse had left her "devastated." A person who believes she was abused as a child "would almost certainly harbor profound resentment, anger, and ill will toward the alleged perpetrator," they contended. "We decline to interpret section 47.1's malice exception to subsume the very privilege it creates," Scott wrote, holding that "some wrongful intent separate from the desire to expose the assault and seek justice" must be shown. The court did not define that intent, and it invited the Legislature to do so.

The claims by Terri and Christopher Sellars failed for a simpler reason: nothing Rose said accused them of a crime. She called Terri Sellars a "narcissist" and a "hot mess," remarks the court called insulting but not accusations of criminal activity. Rose said Christopher Sellars had moved back to Huntington Beach because "[h]e had to come and save his daddy," and she added in the same episode that there was no evidence he had done anything improper. Her accusation of "harboring and abetting a pedophile" was aimed at his wife, Catherine Morgan, who is not a party, though the complaint attributed it to him.

The Sellars family was represented by Rod Pacheco and Irasema Rocha. Rose was represented by Ryan E. Carreon. Alexandra Sagona appeared for Weitz & Luxenberg as a friend of the court supporting Rose.

The case now returns to the Orange County Superior Court, which must set the amount of attorney fees Rose is owed for the appeal.