Santa Barbara Tennis Coach Back in Jail After Another Victim Comes Forward

Peter Jeschke Was Sentenced Tuesday for Sex Crimes Dating Back to 2000

Tuesday afternoon, 25 years after she was molested by her coach, Hillary Huffard walked out of a Santa Barbara courthouse feeling unburdened. “I’m relieved to no longer carry the weight,” she said.

Moments earlier, Huffard’s abuser ― longtime Santa Barbara tennis instructor Peter Jeschke ― had been placed in handcuffs and loaded onto a bus bound for county jail. He’d pleaded guilty to four felony counts of lewd acts and oral copulation with a child, beginning in 2000 when Huffard was 14 years old and a student of his at the Santa Barbara Tennis Club.

This will be Jeschke’s second stretch behind bars after he was previously sentenced in 2011 to nearly eight years in state prison for giving drugs and having sex with a different underage student while he was head coach of the Santa Barbara High School tennis team.

Jeschke’s crimes against Huffard predated his prior conviction, setting up a legally and procedurally awkward decision for Judge Von Deroian as she handed down her ruling. “This case is unusual,” she said.

Since completing his lengthy prison term, Jeschke has “led a law-abiding life” and “taken real steps to turn his life around,” Deroian emphasized. “We don’t always get to see that.” Nearly 50 letters of support were submitted to the judge on his behalf, and the courtroom was filled Tuesday with Jeschke’s family and friends.

But the harm he did was “far reaching” and has “impacted every portion of [Huffard’s] life,” Deroian said. “This is a true example of the trauma and long-lasting effects on victims.” She sentenced Jeschke to 280 days in jail plus two years of probation with a suspended five-year prison sentence if he violates probation. Upon his release, he will be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.

“He is by no means walking away from this unscathed,” said Deroian. Jeschke will also be ordered to pay Huffard restitution, the amount of which will be determined at a later date. “Whatever money he has, if any, should go to the victim,” Deroian said.

In her own words, Huffard described for Jeschke and the court the “profound and lasting impacts” of his abuse that “shattered her sense of trust in people” and had a “corrosive effect” on her ability to form close, lasting relationships. “Peter’s actions penetrated my psyche so deeply,” she said. As she spoke, Jeschke hunched over and kept his eyes on the table in front of him.

The abuse began in a ball shed at the Santa Barbara Tennis Club. It continued in workout rooms and in Jeschke’s car and lasted approximately two years. “Looking back, his behavior was shockingly brazen,” said Huffard, who has filed a civil lawsuit against Jeschke and the club. She described the encounters as “terrifying” and “deeply threatening.”

Huffard detailed her struggles with suicidal thoughts, an eating disorder, and a recent separation from her husband. She’d contacted police in 2023 — which fell just within a new statute of limitations for prosecuting certain sex crimes — and the process of reliving so many suppressed memories during the investigation “put an unbearable strain on our marriage,” she said. Her parents remain wracked with guilt. “You’ve done irreparable harm to my entire family,” she said.

Huffard struggled to maintain her otherwise steady composure as she spoke about her two young daughters whom she is “fiercely protective of.” She said she’s determined not to pass her trauma onto them. “I refuse to carry the pain any longer,” she said.

In his own statement to the court, Jeschke began by describing the challenges he’s faced in his life, starting with his birth when his mother contracted pleurisy, an inflammation of the membrane around the lungs. “I don’t remember it, but I felt it energetically,” he said. Jeschke grew up a shy kid who was “scared of the world” until he found tennis at age 10. He was on track to play professionally, he said, until he received severe injuries in a car crash at 18 “that I probably shouldn’t have walked away from,” he said.

From there, Jeschke described the difficulty of watching his wife nearly die while giving birth and the “heartbreak of divorce” when their relationship later ended. Upon his arrival to prison, he decided “not be a victim,” he said, and use the time inside to better himself through reading, counseling, and somatic therapy. “Prison was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said. “I believe people can change, and I believe I have.”

Jeschke said he continues to feel deep remorse for his “past mistakes” and remains “heartbroken” for the damage he’s done. “I’m so sorry for all the pain I have caused,” he concluded, turning toward Huffard. “I truly am. Love and light to everyone in this room.”

Outside the courthouse, Huffard said she appreciated Jeschke’s apology, despite it coming so late. “I wish my 15-year-old self had been on the receiving end of that,” she said. She called his sentence “a fair means of accountability” and hopes it encourages other survivors of sexual abuse to come forward, even if the crimes occurred years earlier. “The significance doesn’t dissipate,” she said.

Advocates for survivors are available through the Victim-Witness Assistance Program at (805) 568-2400 or toll free at (805) 840-3232. Services including a confidential 24-hour hotline, legal and medical advocacy and accompaniment, and counseling are available through community partner Standing Together to End Sexual Assault at (805) 564-3696.