Bartholome Trial on Rape, Other Sex Charges Opens

Former Los Angeles schoolteacher Terry E. Bartholome went on trial Monday for a variety of child molestation charges--including rape, oral copulation and what the prosecutor described as a “pattern of conduct” in which third-grade students were forced to touch his genitals and watch him masturbate.

In her opening statement, the prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Rita A. Stapleton, said that testimony would show that while students at the 68th Street School in South-Central Los Angeles watched, Bartholome lay on a classroom table “ . . . and masturbated to ejaculation.”

She said the teacher would brush his genitals against female students’ buttocks.

At other times, while wearing trousers from which the pockets had been removed, he would “encourage” female students to retrieve change from him, Stapleton told the Los Angeles Superior Court jury.

In addition to one count each of rape and oral copulation, Bartholome, 49, is charged with 15 felony counts of child molesting and 10 misdemeanor counts of lewd conduct. He has been in custody since his arrest last May 30.

Bartholome’s attorney, Sherwin C. Edelberg, deferred his opening statement until after the prosecution finishes putting on witnesses. He refused to discuss the case Monday.

The Bartholome case has attracted widespread attention because it took Los Angeles school district officials more than a year to report the allegations to police.

A school district administrator, Stuart N. Bernstein, is scheduled to go on trial May 13 on misdemeanor charges in connection with the delay in reporting.

First Witness

Taking the stand as the first witness against Bartholome was a 10-year-old girl who had been one of the defendant’s first-graders during his first year at 68th Street School.

The child said that in May, 1983, while she was alone with her teacher in the classroom, he raised her dress, pulled down her panties and told her to lie on the floor. After unzipping his fly, she testified, the defendant “started moving around.

“It didn’t feel like a little girl was supposed to feel,” the child said during testimony that was interrupted several times when she burst into tears.

Stapleton said during her opening statement that a medical expert would testify that scarring found on the child’s vagina demonstrated there had been “attempted vaginal penetration.”

The 10-year-old also testified that two days after the first alleged incident, when she was again alone with Bartholome, he got her to unzip his pants and orally copulate him. She told no one about what had happened, the child said.

‘I Was Afraid’

“I was afraid that my mama would whip me,” she said, “ . . . and that somebody was going to call me a liar.”

It was during the next school year, Stapleton said, that Bartholome was reassigned to the third grade and began doing what the older children called “nasty things.”

“Several of the children will explain to you that they attempted to tell others what they had seen. . . . Most will indicate to you that they were not believed,” the prosecutor told the jury.

Stapleton said the trial, before Judge Fred Woods, is expected to last six weeks.