Ex-Teacher Ordered to Stand Trial in Sexual Abuse Case

A former Los Angeles schoolteacher was ordered to stand trial Monday for allegedly sexually abusing more than a dozen girls in his third-grade class. A prosecutor said the suspect “poses an extreme danger to any child that age wherever he is.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Rita A. Stapleton made the statement as she successfully opposed a defense attorney’s request to reduce the $200,000 bail for Terry E. Bartholome, 48, a former teacher at the 68th Street School in South-Central Los Angeles.

Bartholome has been held in Los Angeles County Jail since his arrest May 30.

Moments before denying Bartholome’s bail request, Los Angeles Municipal Judge Xenophon F. Lang ordered the teacher to stand trial on 1 count of rape, 1 count of oral copulation, 15 felony counts of child molesting and 10 misdemeanor counts of lewd conduct. Arraignment in Los Angeles Superior Court was set for Aug. 20.

Stapleton said she will file an unspecified number of additional charges against Bartholome before his arraignment, based on new crimes described by child witnesses during the preliminary hearing.

During the hearing, 16 of Bartholome’s former students and one girl not in his class testified that he exposed himself or touched them with his hands or genitals at the school between the spring of 1983 and last December.

Lang dismissed one lewd conduct charge for which the prosecution had presented no evidence.

In court, Stapleton said she had furnished to Bartholome’s attorney, Sherwin C. Edelberg, a copy of a report in which Bartholome admitted “that he has had this problem since age 13.” She did not specifically identify the problem.

Outside the courtroom, Stapleton would say only that the report was prepared by authorities in “another jurisdiction.” She refused to further discuss its nature or contents or to say whether officials of the Los Angeles Unified School District were aware of it.

Edelberg also declined to discuss the report, but said he believes that the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office has been overzealous in its prosecution of Bartholome, particularly since the news media began reporting that school administrators waited more than a year before relaying children’s allegations against the teacher to police. State law requires school personnel to immediately report suspected child abuse to law enforcement agencies.

“I’m very much afraid of the district attorney’s posture here because of the media attention, which seems to be focusing on the Board of Education,” Edelberg said. “The matter has been overcharged.”

The Los Angeles County Grand Jury and the district attorney’s office are investigating the possibility that school officials covered up reports that Bartholome had molested children in his class. The school board fired Bartholome in February.

Bartholome, who is bearded and balding, was “very despondent” after he was bound over for trial, Edelberg said.

“The man is nothing but walking remorse for the shame he has brought to his family by the very act of his arrest,” he said. But Edelberg said his client feels no remorse for the children involved in his case because, “We’re not conceding the crimes occurred.”

The testimony against Bartholome was riddled with contradictions, Edelberg said. “I couldn’t get the same story twice.”

The attorney had specifically asked Lang to dismiss the rape count, contending that the alleged victim described circumstances in which it was “patently impossible for a penetration to have occurred at all.”

He noted that a doctor who examined the child had found her hymen intact.

But Stapleton told the judge that under California law, rape can be charged even though a victim’s vagina is not fully penetrated. The examining physician, Stapleton said, had testified that the girl’s outer genitals showed signs of scarring.