Attorneys Say 2 Teachers Deny Molestation Charges

Attorneys for two Saddleback Valley Unified School District teachers--charged in separate cases with molesting students--Thursday said their clients deny any wrongdoing.

Both teachers were removed from their classrooms about three weeks ago when separate Sheriff’s Department investigations began and the two men were reassigned to the district office, according to school district officials.

On Thursday, both teachers were told to stay home. School officials will decide today whether the two will continue drawing salaries when their cases go to court, said Associate Supt. Ken Anderson.

Robert John Webber, 44, of Rancho Santa Margarita, a mathematics teacher for 13 years at El Toro High School, was charged with two felony counts of sexual molestation and one felony count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a 16-year-old girl student, according to court documents filed Wednesday by the district attorney’s office. The acts allegedly occurred Aug. 19 and Sept. 23 in Webber’s classroom while he and the girl were alone.

Webber is to be arraigned today on the charges in South Orange County Municipal Court.

Keith Sheldon Milne, 38, of Mission Viejo, a reading teacher at Olivewood Elementary School in El Toro, was charged with 10 misdemeanor counts of molesting and annoying 7-, 10- and 11-year-old girl students between January and October, 1987, according to court documents. Specifically, the complaint charged that Milne placed his hand on the girls’ shoulders during class and moved his hand under their blouses to their breasts.

Milne is scheduled to be arraigned on the charges on Nov. 12 in South Orange County Municipal Court.

“The only thing I can tell you is that I am innocent,” Webber said Thursday, referring all questions to his attorney, Stephen D. Klarich.

Klarich said Webber is the victim of a student who was seeking revenge for receiving a D-minus grade in a math class last year and that the teen-ager has other “motives to fabricate a story like this.”

He declined to give those motives. Webber, divorced last year, has reconciled with his ex-wife, Klarich said. The couple have four children.

According to court documents, the girl told Sheriff’s Department investigators that Webber asked in January, 1987, if she wanted to have an affair after he found a note she had written to a classmate describing her attraction to an unnamed teacher. She told Webber yes, according to her statement.

Nothing came of the “affair,” she said, until incidents of sexual touching began between the two in April, always in a classroom when the two were alone, and continued through last month.

On Sept. 22, the girl told another teacher, whom she said she trusted, that she was having a sexual affair with Webber, according to statements by her and the teacher. The teacher admitted to sheriff’s investigators that he did not notify school officials about what the girl said, according to court documents.

The next day, Sept. 23, the one incident of alleged intercourse occurred.

Sheriff’s investigators were called into the case on Sept. 25 after a third teacher told school officials that she overheard the girl tell a friend about her sexual relationship with Webber, according to court documents.

On Sept. 28, according to court documents, sheriff’s investigators, with the girl’s permission, wiretapped a telephone call that they asked the girl to make to Webber. In a transcript of that recording filed by the district attorney’s office with the court documents, Webber is quoted as asking the girl if she was going to lie to police when they questioned her.

“You’ll never see me again if you don’t lie,” Webber is quoted as saying in the sheriff’s report.

In a separate interview with sheriff’s investigators filed with the court documents, Webber said the girl was a D-minus student who made sexual advances on him and that he asked school officials to have her removed from his class. “I avoided her like the plague,” he is quoted as saying.

“She seemed like she was obsessed with me,” he said later.

The girl told investigators that Webber never threatened or coerced her into sexual contact and that Webber had never said her grades would be affected by their relationship.

The girl was not enrolled in Webber’s class for the current school term.

Paul J. Wallin, a partner with Kralich in the Tustin law firm they share, said his client Milne is a victim of a heated environment in the country surrounding alleged child sexual abuse incidents.

“My client has been a school teacher for 15 years,” Wallin said. “He has always been a hands-on teacher who never hesitates to give hugs. After 15 years has my client suddenly turned into a sexual raving lunatic or is there a changed climate (in the country)? He has never had any accusation of misconduct.”

According to court documents, sheriff’s investigators were called to the case after five 10- and 11-year-old girls walked into the office of Olivewood Elementary School Principal Bob Gaebel and accused their reading teacher of touching their breasts.

Gaebel told investigators that he had received four previous reports complaining that Milne had made his students uncomfortable, apparently because of touching them.

In the most recent report, in May of 1987, two students complained that Milne had touched them improperly. When school officials contacted the parents, who were already aware of the incident, they told Gaebel the incident “was not enough to warrant an investigation.”

According to court documents, Gaebel wrote to the school district superintendent that on May 13 he had filed a report of the incident with the Child Abuse Registry. He included with the letter a copy of a newspaper article about another high school principal who had been sued for not notifying authorities of a report of child sexual abuse on the campus.

In a June 22 letter to Milne about the May complaint, Gaebel wrote that Milne, whom he acknowledged as a teacher fond of encouraging students with hugs, should follow several rules around his students: Never be alone in a room with one; always leave the class door open when with students and limit his physical contact with the students to handshakes.

Milne, who is separated from his wife, has legal custody of their two boys, his attorney Wallin said.