Molestation Case : School Official May Be Charged for Slow Report

The district attorney’s office recommended Thursday that misdemeanor charges be filed against a Los Angeles Unified School District administrator, Stuart Bernstein, for allegedly failing to promptly notify police about child molestation allegations against a one-time teacher.

The teacher, Terry Bartholome, 48, of Newbury Park, is being held in lieu of $200,000 bail. He awaits trial on 45 sexual molestation counts stemming from alleged acts committed against 17 girls in his third-grade class at the 68th Street School in South-Central Los Angeles in 1983 and 1984.

The recommendation concerning Bernstein, who at the time was a regional administrator in South-Central Los Angeles, has been forwarded to the Los Angeles city attorney’s office, which will make the final decision on filing charges. It comes as part of an ongoing criminal investigation by the district attorney’s office of a possible cover-up by school district officials of Bartholome’s alleged child molesting.

Mary House of the city attorney’s special trials unit said the district attorney’s recommendation will be taken under review and that “nothing has been decided yet.”

Bernstein, 48, could face a maximum six months in jail and a $1,000 fine if convicted under a 1981 law that requires school authorities to report incidents of suspected child abuse to police within 36 hours.

Steve Sowders, head deputy of the district attorney’s special investigations division, said Bernstein did not report allegations first made to him on Nov. 30, 1984, until more than two weeks later.

“The allegations came up the chain of reporting within the school district itself to Mr. Bernstein--and it stopped there,” Sowders said. “It did not go to any (school) district police . . . or to the Los Angeles Police Department.”

Sowders said the investigation of a possible conspiracy by school district officials to cover up Bartholome’s activities is continuing. The probe began after it was learned that school authorities did not notify police or remove Bartholome from his teaching post for more than a year after students and parents began making allegations against him.

Shortly after Bartholome’s arrival at the school in the fall of 1983, Principal Alice McDonald said she made her first report to administrators in the regional office. She again reported accusations against the teacher in the spring and fall of 1984.

But Bernstein, Sowders charged, did not contact school district police until Dec. 18, 1984. Bartholome was arrested last May, five months after Los Angeles police were first notified of the allegations.

School officials have since disclosed that Bartholome was transferred to 68th Street School after having been previously accused of molesting female students while teaching at the 107th Street School in Watts. However, that investigation was stopped after witnesses said they could not go through with their participation in the case.

Sowders said felony charges could still be filed in the 68th Street School case, if authorities determine that school officials conspired to withhold the allegations from police.

While the statute of limitations for filing felony conspiracy charges is three years, Sowders said, the statute dealing with misdemeanors--such as the one alleged against Bernstein--is one year.

“Basically, we’re presenting it to the city attorney today,” Sowders said, “because of the statute of limitations.”

Bill Rivera, a Los Angeles school district spokesman, said the Bernstein case “is obviously a case for law enforcement and we have no comment.”

Bernstein, who has been employed by the district since 1959, has also served as a teacher, a principal and director of the district’s integration program. Since the Bartholome revelations, he has been transferred to the Office of Instruction as a special projects administrator.

Bartholome faces a maximum penalty of 68 years in state prison and six years in county jail.