The Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) will pay $22 million to settle lawsuits by 16 current and former students who were sexually abused by two coaches.
LAUSD, the second largest in the United States behind New York City, will pay $14 million to nine girls who were abused by Ronnie Lee Roman, a former youth services coach at two elementary schools. The district will pay $8 million to seven boys who were abused by Jaime Jimenez, a former high school football coach.
Roman is serving 105 years in prison after he was convicted of lewd acts on a child. He was found guilty molesting girls from 8 to 12 years of age.
Jimenez was sentenced to more than 36 years after he pleaded no contest to sexual abuse and battery, and lewd acts on a child. His victims were between 13 and 16 years old, and one of them has since killed himself, according to Morgan Stewart, one of the attorneys representing victims.
The school district ignored complaints against Roman going back more than a decade and did nothing about Jimenez’s “red flags,” including secluding students in locker rooms, and spending long periods of time with them on and off campus, Stewart said.
″ (The district) still doesn’t understand its fundamental duty to protect the children in its care, sadly,” said the attorney for the victims.
LAUSD settled with 82 victims of Miramonte Elementary School teacher Mark Berndt who for more than two decades committed a shocking variety of lewd and disgusting acts with his pupils. He was finally arrested and sent to prison, but not before being paid $40,000 to resign after years of spoon-feeding his sperm to students.
Berndt retains lifetime health coverage and his pension, totaling $3,891.17 monthly in pretax benefits. If he lives to the average age of a man in California, he'll collect about $1 million. Payout to victims and legal fees are now more than $200 million by LAUSD.
Schools have proven to be incapable of protecting students from sexual predators. School administrators have credentials but lack common sense and the courage to act.
Redlands Unified School District (RUSD) agreed to pay more than $30 million to settle lawsuits involving sexual misconduct by school employees between 2016 and 2018. However, they then decided to change how they managed employees and to create a no-tolerance culture for sexual abuse.
Mary Rone Shell, a RUSD spokeswoman, said renewed efforts to protect students were made not solely as a result of those lawsuits and an increase in the district’s insurance claims since the payouts. “We want individuals who have maleficence to know they are not welcome,” she said.
The Redlands policy now instructs employees to avoid being alone with individual students out of view of others, inviting or allowing students to visit their homes, remaining on campus with students alone or visiting a student’s home.
Staff is also instructed not to contact students for personal purposes outside of school by phone, letter, texts or social media. If they want to contact students for educational purposes, they must loop in another adult, like a parent or the school principal.
Adults are also instructed not to follow, accept friend requests from or communicate with minors on social media. When a coach or club adviser wants to text students, they must message all team members at once, unless it involves a student’s private academic or medical issues, in which case they must loop in the school principal.
The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing says they had 5,895 misbehavior referrals in school year 2017-2018. Crimes involving alcohol 2,482; other crimes 1,332; serious crimes/felonies 942; drugs 251; child crime nonsexual 447; child crime sexual 331; adult sexual 110.
California public schools are no longer anchored to any moral foundation, they can no longer agree on gender, and a variety of sexual activities are encouraged short of forced sex or rape. Sex education, some of which is mandatory, includes sexual perversion and deviancy. Some of the individuals establishing these rules would be considered weirdos or deranged in the past.
The institutional moral free-fall is coupled with a union that has established teaching as the only profession that must have ironclad job guarantees. This is absurd and has no place in a free society that thrives on competition.
Union driven government schools are socialist schools that have horrible outcomes while devouring massive amounts of public wealth. They consider any attempt at competition, free speech, teacher merit pay, and freeing teachers from mandatory union dues as anathema.
The system is totalitarian in that it essentially relies on secrecy, control and force where parents are privy to very little that occurs in the classroom. When parents aren’t looking contrary policies and political agendas are introduced.
The mafia cannot compete with union protection of incompetent and abusive teachers as well as predators. Many school leaders actually consider themselves superior to parents.
It is in this context and school culture that sexual abuse of children is now epidemic.
(Get Lou’s podcast at “No Hostages Radio” and his articles at nohostagesradio.com)
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