Charlie Kirk-aligned church sued by father of sexual abuse victim

In January, Glendale police arrested Nathaniel Pineda for grooming and allegedly having sex multiple times with a 15-year-old girl he taught and coached at Dream City Christian School, a private Christian school associated with the Charlie Kirk-aligned Dream City Church. Pineda pleaded guilty to multiple felonies and is serving a 3.5-year stint in prison.

Now, the girl’s father is suing the school and a host of other entities — including shell organizations, school leaders and Pineda’s mother, whose house he used for his underaged liaisons — for negligently ignoring warning signs about Pineda’s conduct. Neither the girl nor her father is identified in the suit, which was filed Sept. 26 in Maricopa County Superior Court.

“They did nothing to stop him,” the lawsuit says. “Pineda was never disciplined, fired or given additional oversight, which led directly to the foreseeable criminal conduct resulting in significant harm.”

Based in Glendale, Dream City Christian School is owned by Dream City Church, which is also named as a defendant in the suit. The church has gained fame due to its close association with Kirk and his nonprofit political organization Turning Point USA. Following Kirk’s assassination last month, church leaders vowed to carry on his work, including by promoting that marriage should be between only one man and one woman and that premarital sex is immoral. The school also has taken in $2 million in taxpayer-funded Empowerment Scholarship Account funds so far in 2025.

Dream City Christian Schools did not respond to a Phoenix New Times inquiry about the lawsuit and the events described in it. The school’s Glendale campus — there is also a Scottsdale location — serves around 500 students from preschool through 12th grade.

According to the suit, the girl’s father wanted to send his two daughters to a private school for a Christian education and was drawn to Dream City by its website, which includes statements such as “We reject non-Biblical, immoral ideology and equip our students to be strong, Christian leaders.” The daughter at the center of the suit began as a freshman at the school in 2023. Pineda, who was 33 at the time, coached her in volleyball.

However, he did far more than just that, according to the suit and police records. According to the suit, Pineda sent the girl “explicit text messages, inducing her to do the same, masturbat(ed) on FaceTime calls together, and pick(ed) her up for sex” at Pineda’s mother’s house, where he was living at the time. Pineda’s mother — Theresa Cawood, who also worked at Dream City Christian School for some of that time, per the suit — is also named as a defendant. The lawsuit argues Cawood is liable for abuse that happened under her roof.

In January 2024, the girl’s stepmother discovered the sexually-charged text messages between Pineda and the girl, who confirmed that the two had been in a sexual relationship. She called police, sparking an investigation that resulted in Pineda’s arrest that same month. Last September, Pineda pleaded guilty to three counts of attempt to commit sexual conduct with a minor, a class 3 felony.

‘Ignored and uninvestigated’

Pineda’s criminal case has already been adjudicated, but the lawsuit against Dream City Christian School argues that school personnel should have been aware of the danger he posed to students.

According to the suit, Pineda would “hang out” with some of the volleyball players at their own parties, at one even playing Twister with a number of girls in dresses. Per the Glendale police report, he was once reprimanded for taking one student golfing without informing the school or the student’s parents. (Nothing sexual is alleged in that case; it appears Pineda took a liking to the student because they are both originally from Guam.)

The police report notes that school emails show Pineda was reprimanded for the golfing trip, though no formal record of it was made in his personnel file. The suit claims that Kris Hutson, the school superintendent, looked the other way at Pineda’s indiscretions because he was her “best friend.” The suit also claims that H. Atwood Standley, the school’s chief risk officer, was aware of Pineda’s sketchy interactions with his players because Standley’s daughter was on the team and regularly complained about Pineda’s “creepy or weird” behavior.

“The allegations and complaints went ignored and uninvestigated,” the lawsuit says. “Indeed, Pineda was never disciplined or put under stricter scrutiny or oversight by the school or its officers or directors or agents.”

The lawsuit also argues that the school was negligent in hiring Pineda in the first place, contending that he “lacked the qualifications to work in any role at DCCS that involved contact with students” and that Dream City “employed lax hiring qualifications.” The suit says the only hoop Pineda had to jump through to be hired was to sign a statement saying “that God has commanded that no intimate sexual activity be engaged in outside of a marriage between a man and a woman.” The lawsuit alleges that the school had no policy for preventing sexual abuse and relied solely on such affirmations of faith.

The suit claims that if the school had run a background check on Pineda, it would have found that he had been similarly problematic at a school in Guam. The suit provides no specifics about that alleged previous conduct, though it also pins blame on Pineda’s mother because of it. “Ms. Cawood knew of her son’s past misdeeds in Guam, and therefore, it was foreseeable that Pineda would pursue his old patterns and practices with underaged girls,” the complaint says.

Also named in the suit are three other entities — Dream City Schools, Inc., School Campus, LLC, and the corporation Legacy for the Kingdom — that operate as parent organizations of the school along with Dream City Church. “The Dream City Franchise has set up an intricate system of legal entities to separate out and shield it from liability,” the lawsuit says.

The girl’s father is seeking relief on 10 claims, including negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, battery, assault, violation of mandatory reporting laws and civil conspiracy for aiding and abetting Pineda’s conduct. The suit seeks compensation, punitive damages and attorneys’ costs and fees.

The suit says Pineda’s abuse caused the girl to suffer severe emotional, psychological and physical harm, resulting in depression and withdrawal. It adds that her education and social development have been disrupted and she needed regular counseling and treatment. Additionally, the suit claims the girl’s stepmother left the marriage to her father “as a direct and proximate cause of the trauma,” and her father also lost his consulting business in the aftermath of the ordeal.