Los Angeles schools knew of complaints
against former teacher: LA Times
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[September 26, 2014]
(Reuters) - The Los Angeles Unified
School District knew of complaints made against a former teacher some 30
years before he was convicted of taking bondage-style photographs of his
young students, some with spoonfuls of semen held to their faces, the
Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday.
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Court documents filed in a civil lawsuit showed that education
officials received complaints against 63-year-old Mark Berndt as
early as 1983, after he allegedly dropped his pants during a school
field trip, the Los Angeles Times said.
The documents also stated that Berndt, who taught at Miramonte
Elementary School, thanked the school's principal for his "support"
following the incident, the Los Angeles Times said.
Reuters could not independently verify the report. Representatives
for the school district did not immediately respond to a request for
comment.
The former third grade teacher pleaded no contest to roughly two
dozen counts of lewd acts upon a child and was sentenced to 25 years
in prison in November 2013. Authorities had previously revealed that
Berndt's actions could have spanned as far back as the 1990s.
Law enforcement officials were initially alerted to the crimes by a
drugstore film processing technician who noticed strange photographs
of blindfolded children. In some of the photos, the students had
spoonfuls of semen held to their faces, while others had cockroaches
crawling on them, authorities said.
The school district last year reached a roughly $30 million
settlement with 63 children and their families, who had sued over
abuse by Berndt.
Revelations of a potentially wider scope of abuse have arisen in the
separate civil lawsuit against the district pursued by about 70 more
plaintiffs.
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In May, Los Angeles Judge John Shepard Wiley said that Berndt may
have abused as many as 100 children, citing a 512-page investigative
report from the local Sheriff's Department.
Investigators found that Berndt molested his students, getting them
to touch him inappropriately and exposing himself to them by sitting
in short shorts without underwear.
Berndt's attorney, Manny Medrano, said then that his client never
molested or exposed himself to children.
(Reporting by Curtis Skinner in San Francisco; Editing by Angus
MacSwan)
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