Mark Berndt
Do you know who's teaching your kids?
For those of you not fortunate to live in the Great City of Los Angeles, currently under the regime of Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, you may not know what the biggest story in town is these days. It is illustrative of what has become of the LA Unified School District over the last several decades. This week, a 61-year-old teacher named Mark Berndt was charged with committing lewd acts with children in his classes at Mira Monte Elementary School in South LA. Worse yet, it appears that there had been previous complaints about Berndt's classroom behavior going back to the 1990s. One case was referred to the DA, but prosecution was declined. Yet, Berndt served as a teacher from 1979 to when he was removed by the school district last year. Huffington Post (ugh) has a partial report.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/01/mark-berndt-arrested-miramonte-school_n_1247317.html
All this week, the John and Ken radio talk show in LA has been running with this story. Aside from the unspeakable acts contained in the HuffPost article, John and Ken reported that one student from the 1990s had accused Berndt of trying to run his hand up her dress while she was seated at her desk. Other students claimed that Bernt occasionally seemed to be masturbating behind his desk, which was partially covered. Once, when a curious student walked up to see what he was doing with his hands behind the desk, Berndt allegedly yelled at the student not to approach his desk. Some of the reports have come from former students who are now adults, but were too young to understand what was going on when they were at Mira Monte.
Today, as many parents came to the school to take their kids out, it is now reported that another Mira Monte teacher is under investigation for child molestation. (Update: He was arrested today, but his name is not yet available.)
How the hell is it that the people who worked with Berndt at Mira Monte were so clueless over the years? I'm a (college) teacher, and I can tell you that if another teacher were even romantically involved with another teacher or a student, it wouldn't be a secret. People would know. When some teacher allegedly has a habit of coming to school dressed in a Richard Simmons workout suit, don't eyebrows get raised?
In the 1960s, I graduated from University High School in West LA. It was the second-highest rated school academically in the country. Opened in 1926, it had the most beautiful campus you can imagine, built on the side of a hill with a split level divided by fir trees. It even contained the site of an old Indian encampment that had a running brook. Now it looks like a run down penitentiary with iron gating encircling the campus.
But, of course, on the other side of town, schools were not so idyllic, I confess.
Is there a teaching point to be made here, a so-called "teachable moment" as they say in school? Maybe, we should take a second look at helping parents escape the public school system and make alternatives available to them. Mira Monte is located in a heavily-Hispanic area. How many of those parents do you think have the resources and wherewith all to take their kids out of the LAUSD (where only about 50% of students get a high school diploma) and get their kids into a quality school of their choice? One political party tends to support the idea of school choice, while another opposes it as part of their duty to stand up for the public teachers unions, which also oppose the idea.
Something about competition.
Anyway, you are up-to-date on the biggest news story in LA, and the news media is having a hard time catching up with the fast breaking developments. HuffPO? They have a long way to go to catch up.
5 comments:
This doesn't sound like romance to me, does it to you? I doubt if the teacher was walking hand in hand with his victims during recess. There is generally one teacher in each classroom. If the kids don't know until they grow up what the significance of his behavior was, and if they don't say anything to their parents, then it is unlikely another teacher would ever have a clue.
Siarlys,
I only added the romance bit because I am not a teacher of children. In a college, teachers can have romances between themselves, and some do with students assuming they are 18.
In this case, there had been at least two complaints about his behavior in 1990 and 1994. Somebody had a clue. Yet he was employed at the same school for 30 years.
Complaints is one thing -- all the other teachers should have known is another. Complaints should be followed up on.
There were at least two complaints in the 90s. In one, the girl was reportedly told she was lying. The other was referred by police to the DA's office. They declined prosecution and the teacher continued working at the school until last year.
Now it appears that one victim was victimized by both of the charged teachers. There is another allegation that Bernt would come to a room on the school grounds where pupils were engaged in after school activity-supervised by teachers, of course. He allegedly would pick one of the children out and remove that child to another classroom alone.
Neat, huh?
Well, yes, police have been known to treat witnesses and complainants like that. I remember the videos of a police officer browbeating a girl who reported an attempted kidnapping, telling her she was lying and should just confess it... only it turned out there were shopping center security video tapes that confirmed her story. You can't place too much faith in ANYONE, no matter what they are sworn to do. There are bad apples in every barrel.
The "Victim's rights" movement was originally about the way people who report crimes are treated by police and prosecutors... until the prosecutors hijacked it and made it into a "prosecutors rights to browbeat suspects" movement.
(To be fair and balanced, defense lawyers are snobbish and patronizing to their clients too).
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