Santa Monica teacher to face 9 new molestation charges involving 3 girls

A Santa Monica middle school teacher who allegedly molested five of his female students will face nine additional charges today involving three new victims, officials said.

Thomas Arthur Beltran, 60, is expected to be arraigned today on the new charges, which allegedly involve incidents spanning from September 2000 to June 2004, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.

A Lincoln Middle School teacher for two decades who taught English as a second language to seventh-graders, Beltran pleaded not guilty last month to 14 felony counts of sexual molestation.

According to court documents, the alleged abuse took place as far back as Dec. 1, 2004, and as recently as April 30.

The 30-year Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District employee was arrested after a 12-year-old student reported the alleged abuse to her parents, police said. She later repeated her account to detectives. Investigators interviewed Beltran’s other students and identified three who allegedly were victimized, police said.

At least five of the alleged victims were molested during school hours, and the suspected abuse of one student continued for more than a year, authorities said.

As the investigation continued, police began to contact all of Beltran’s former students. They also found a videotape recording of at least one of the alleged molestations, police said.

The charges included an incident in 2006 that was investigated by police and reported to the school principal but that prosecutors said lacked sufficient evidence to file charges.

School board and district officials said a “breakdown in communication” and changes to school and district staffing prevented the incident from being fully examined by officials. There was no indication of any complaints or previous incidents in Beltran’s personnel file, said Assistant Supt. Mike Matthews.

Since Beltran’s arrest, outraged parents have pushed for sweeping districtwide policy changes. As a result, the district started a new incident reporting system last week that requires the staff to inform the district in writing whenever a potentially dangerous situation is reported to school officials, Matthews said.

“The idea of that is to make sure the district has [it] in writing whenever something occurs,” he said.

The district also has created a parent committee that meets with the district to review child abuse policies and gives input to the Board of Education as it works to revise its four-sentence child abuse reporting policy. The state penal code requires educators to report child abuse allegations.

At Thursday night’s school board meeting, a revised policy on prevention and reporting of child abuse was presented. The revised policy, which is about 10 pages long, includes a lengthy outline of reporting protocol specifics and responsibilities.

If convicted, Beltran could face a maximum sentence of life in prison.

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tami.abdollah@latimes.com