The water polo phenomaccused in a lawsuit of sexually abusing and racially tormenting a black teammateat an elite Los Angeles private school is the son of a Hollywood director who has worked on blockbuster films including “Ocean’s Eleven” and “Castaway,” according to a new report.
Lucca van der Woude — a former Harvard-Westlake School standout once considered a future Olympic prospect — is the son of longtime film assistant director Thomas “Basti” van der Woude, the Daily Mail reported.
The elder van der Woude has worked on dozens of major productions over the past three decades including “Fast & Furious 5,” “Thor: The Dark World,” “Battleship,” and the AMC television series “Fear the Walking Dead.”
The filmmaker — known professionally as Basti — won a Director’s Guild of Americaaward in 2016for Outstanding Directorial Achievement as part of the team behind the HBO film “Bessie.”
Van der Woude’s mother, Nilda, allegedly served as the water polo team’s “team mom,” coordinating logistics and communications for parents — a role that the lawsuit claims helped cement the younger van der Woude’s standing on the squad, the Daily Mail reported.
The titanic allegations against the athlete surfaced in the suitfiled last week by former teammate Aidan Romain, who claims he was subjected to months of racist harassment and sexual abuse while playing on Harvard-Westlake’s elite team.
Romain — the only black player on the team — alleges van der Woude repeatedly hurled racial slurs and sexually assaulted him during practices and team activities while they were minors at the ultra-exclusive school in the Hollywood Hills.
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Van der Woude was arrested on campus in February 2024 and later admitted in juvenile court to sexual penetration of a minor with a foreign object, The Post previously reported.
The lawsuit also names another player — Connor Kim, now a water polo athlete at Harvard Univeristy — as participating in racially abusive behavior toward Romain, the Daily Mail reported.
Source: California Post – Breaking California News, Photos & Videos
