Divided Camps in El Toro : Teacher Episode Tearing School Apart

On the face of it, the case of The People vs. Keith Sheldon Milne was hardly unique: another teacher charged with molesting his students.

In Orange County alone, a high school bandleader, a boys’ track coach, a high school math teacher and a school board trustee were all charged with sexually molesting children in 1987. Already this year, still more charges have been filed against other adults who allegedly molested the children they were paid to care for.

But last month a jury exonerated Keith Sheldon Milne, 39 years old and the father of two, on seven misdemeanor counts of touching eight fifth-grade girls on their breasts, thighs and under their blouses.

And although the jury deadlocked 11 to 1 for acquittal on the remaining two counts--one woman juror said something just didn’t seem quite right--the prosecution later dropped the charges. The evidence admissible in court just wasn’t strong enough.

Were it to end there, Milne said, things would have been bad enough. He has lost friends, spent nearly a year away from his students and borrowed money to help pay more than $50,000 in attorney’s fees. When he talked about the potential effect on his two young sons, tears rimmed his eyes.

But things have gotten worse. Rightly or wrongly, the shadow of a doubt still trails Keith Milne.

Citing his “immoral conduct” and “evident unfitness to teach,” the Saddleback Valley Unified School District fired Milne earlier this month, after 17 years at El Toro’s Olivewood Elementary School. And it was that decision, even more than the court trial, that has divided the teachers, students and parents of Olivewood, hardening the positions of some and sowing doubt in others.

“I have a neighbor who doesn’t know that I exist anymore,” said the mother of one of the girls in the trial. “She totally ignores me.”

Although Milne said he will appeal his dismissal before an administrative panel, it could be months before a hearing is convened and a year before a decision is reached.

“I have great difficulty with the situation,” said Norma Cameron, whose daughter, Rhonda, is a former student of Milne’s. “There is a frightening aspect to all of this. I want my child protected, (but) on the other hand, I don’t want to see good teachers frightened . . . because of this kind of unjust accusation.”

But school district sources told The Times that they have seen evidence not admissible in the courtroom, including four internal school district memos dating back to 1983, that give the district a strong case against Milne.

Some of the material seen by school officials was a statement by the district attorney that four of Milne’s former students at Olivewood were prepared to testify that Milne put his hand down their pants, forced them to sit on his lap and kissed them. The alleged incidents date back as early as 1977.

Bill Evans, the supervising deputy of the district attorney’s sexual assault-child abuse unit, described that information--which wasn’t shown to the jury in Milne’s trial--as “extremely material” toward proving Milne’s sexual intent.

Municipal Judge Blair T. Barnette, who presided over the 2 1/2-week trial, said that although he cannot recall all his reasons for excluding evidence, he believed some testimony to be hearsay, while other evidence was so old as to be irrelevant.

“Some of it was 13 years old and it was stale and it was conceded by everyone that it would be unfair to the defendant to put it in,” Barnette said of the evidence that he would not allow the jury to see.

Rules of evidence will be more permissive in the school district’s closed administrative hearing than they were in Municipal Court, and as a result the three-member panel is expected to hear testimony that the jurors did not. The panel also can uphold Milne’s dismissal if it is convinced within “a reasonable certainty” that there is just cause for it.

These different standards, Milne argues, in effect put the school district above the law. But even his friends said the school district’s decision has given them pause.

Milne’s supporters “make it sound like all of a sudden everyone is out to get Keith,” said one Olivewood teacher who, like the others interviewed for this story, requested anonymity on the advice of the school district’s attorney.

“It’s not like that,” she said. “He is our friend. I cried uncontrollably when I heard about this. I’ve known this man for years. He has a problem. We would like him to get help.”

The extent of Milne’s alleged “problem” is at the heart of the dilemma facing Olivewood Elementary School and those whose lives are intertwined with what goes on inside its classrooms.

Milne, who still manages his son’s Little League team, says that he is simply a “hands-on teacher” who will instinctively touch children to offer encouragement, congratulations or as a show of affection.

“It’s not the place you touch, it’s what’s meant by how it’s done,” Milne said in a recent interview. “I’m not going to say that they are lying or that they made it up, but I think that they weren’t clear on their impressions of what I did or didn’t do, or what I meant by it. . . . And the jury was able to reinforce that.”

Yet even Milne, while maintaining his innocence during a tape-recorded interview with an Orange County Sheriff’s Department investigator on the evening of his arrest, conceded that his touching may have become excessive.

“Mr. Milne then told us that ‘I admit touching their shoulders and I admit that it’s wrong and I know it’s a problem or else I wouldn’t have thought about it,’ ” investigator Christine Murray said in her written report of that Oct. 6 interview.

During his trial, several children testified that they interpreted Milne’s pats on the back and shoulders as a friendly, natural gesture. Olivewood parents who have supported him stress his devotion to students, his long working hours and his seeming ability to gear his teaching methods to each student individually. In his often hectic computer-reading laboratory, they pointed out, this was no easy feat.

“A lot of times, I’m not even cognizant of touching kids,” Milne said. “It’s just a natural outgrowth. There is nothing sexual whatsoever about it.

“That is probably what bothered me more than anything else, the sexual overtones of all this,” he added. “Those were the charges, that there was sexual intent. People who know me know that can’t be true.”

Sexual intent, or the teacher’s motivation when he touched the girls, was key to the prosecution’s case against Milne.

Jurors in the south Orange County municipal courtroom where Milne stood trial were told that they could only reach a guilty verdict if they found the defendant’s conduct “so lewd that a normal person would unhesitatively be disturbed or irritated by it” and only if they were convinced it was motivated by “an unnatural or abnormal sexual interest with respect to children,” according to jury instructions that became part of the court file.

“We spent those three days looking at the nitty-gritty details,” jury foreman Neil S. Thomas said of the jurors’ deliberations on the final two counts against Milne. “We called back for testimony, but there was nothing really there. There was a hint that there was something more there. But we couldn’t make a decision on something we didn’t hear.”

Thomas recalled that when Principal Bob Gaebel was on the witness stand, he made a reference to “red flags going up”’ about Milne. But before Gaebel could finish his thought, Thomas said, defense attorney Paul Wallin made an objection, which was sustained by the judge.

“So, of course, we heard nothing,” Thomas said.

But the court file contains a memo, written by Gaebel and dated May, 1987, five months before the complaint involving the eight girls in the court case, in which the principal recalled “a troublesome conversation” he had with an Olivewood teacher about Milne putting his hand under the blouses of a 9-year-old girl and her 8-year-old sister.

Gaebel, as required by a 1981 state law, passed on the complaint to Orange County’s Child Abuse Registry even though the girls’ mother, concerned about the implications for Milne’s career, refused to cooperate. At that time, the complaint was not believed to be serious enough to warrant police action.

Gaebel also wrote a letter May 28, 1987, to Peter Hartman, superintendent of the Saddleback Valley Unified School District, in which he recalled warning Milne about inappropriately touching his students. The letter is part of the court file but was not admitted as evidence.

“Even though I have witnessed Mr. Milne to be a sensitive teacher who really cares about his students,” Gaebel wrote, “I made the point that hugs, pats and back rubs can be easily misconstrued by students and (that) continuing to give hugs, pats and back rubs is too great a risk for him to take.

“I concluded by saying that I felt he was lucky that the parents of the children involved did not want to create an incident over this,” Gaebel said in the letter. “I said another parent might have chosen to call the police or notify the press over this situation. And if they had, the mere accusation might have ended his career.”

Gaebel came to Olivewood at the start of the 1985-86 school year acutely aware of his legal responsibility to report any suspicion of child abuse. In 1984, Marc Eric Poteet, a janitor at Olivewood, had been arrested for molesting several children who attended an after-school child care program run by the Saddleback Valley YMCA on the Olivewood campus.

Poteet, who pleaded guilty, was sentenced to three years in state prison.

In August, 1987, the school district and the YMCA agreed to pay $429,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by two of the parents in the Poteet case who claimed that nothing was done to prevent the janitor from molesting their children, even though officials had been told that Poteet seemed to have an unnatural attraction to children.

The principal when the Poteet molestations took place was Jeff Herdman, now principal at Trabuco-Mesa Elementary School in Mission Viejo.

In the Milne case, according to a district attorney’s statement to the judge, an Olivewood teacher said a group of girls complained to her that Milne had put his hand down their pants. The teacher told prosecutors that she reported this to the principal, who at the time was Herdman.

“There was no way that these girls were lying,” the teacher said in an interview. “These were highly gifted kids. But after I told the principal, I was sorry I did. He made it sound as if I was making it up.”

Contacted by telephone, Herdman said he would not comment about anything connected with his eight-year tenure at Olivewood.

During an interview at his Mission Viejo home, Milne said that he didn’t know why these or any other students would accuse him of any impropriety, but added, “It’s fun to be part of a group.

“I think there will be a lot of other things that will be coming out,” he said. “I’m sure there’s all sorts of possibilities of things that could be shown.”

Yet Milne maintains that if he did touch the girls--he said he can’t begin to remember just whom he touched or where--he did so in the context of teaching and with no sexual intentions. The 10- and 11-year-old girls involved in the trial, he suggested, were confused.

Crucial to Milne’s courtroom victory was defense attorney Wallin’s contention that the girls involved in the lawsuit were confused by the Child Abuse Prevention Program, a presentation that the program’s director, Nancy Dickerson, said more than 200,000 Orange County children have seen since December, 1985.

The program, presented at Olivewood for four years, attempts to educate children about potentially dangerous situations by having program presenters stage three different “role plays.” One play involves a bully the same age as the children, another features a stranger who asks a child to hold a flashlight as she “fixes” her car and a third involves “an uncle” who makes a child uncomfortable by touching her on the thigh.

Before they may see the program, children are required to have parental permission and, at Olivewood, parents are encouraged to view the program first themselves. Dickerson said that the program has never prompted any complaints about confusing children.

But Wallin, according to jurors and others who viewed the trial, successfully conveyed the idea in court that almost immediately after viewing the program, all the girls went to the principal to complain that Milne had touched them like the “uncle” did in the program.

According to Dickerson and the parents of the students involved in the suit, however, the children at Olivewood saw the program in June, 1987, almost four months before the girls went to Principal Gaebel with their complaints about Milne. Court documents show that only one of the girls who later became involved in the court case complained about Milne at the end of the program.

“The problem is there are too many inferences,” Milne said of the program. “They give an example of an uncle putting his hand on somebody’s knee area and they say, ‘Tell.’ You know, how is the child to know if that was sexual or not?

“I think when you are asking kids to come up with something, ‘Come on, please me, come on, come up with something,’ which is the way they end all their lectures . . . the kids, whose goal is to please, are definitely going to be more prone to come up with something like this.”

Milne conceded, however, that he has never seen the program.

“Just because someone touches your legs doesn’t mean that it is a bad touch,” Dickerson said. “That’s what we tell the kids, that they are the ones to decide if it is not a good touch. . . . I think that if we were doing all the things that Mr. Milne and his attorney said we were doing, we wouldn’t still be operating in all these school districts.”

(Beginning with the upcoming school year, Dickerson’s program, under contract with the county’s Social Services Agency, will be operating in 28 school districts in Orange County.)

Regardless of their personal feelings about Wallin, those who observed his defense of Milne described it as masterful. They said his national reputation--he specializes in defending accused child molesters--is well-deserved.

To the press, Wallin described his client as a happily married father. In fact, Milne has been legally separated from his wife, still a close friend, for three years. The couple’s boys, ages 9 and 7, live with their father.

In the courtroom, Wallin succeeded in excluding key prosecution evidence and according to jurors, teachers and parents, intimidated, confused and downplayed the feelings of the girls who complained about the way Milne touched them.

When he didn’t like certain testimony, they said, he would use theatrical tactics, such as rolling his eyes, to convey to the jury that what was being said should be taken with a grain of salt.

“My little girl is very strong, and she was almost in tears,” said the mother of one of the fifth-grade girls who took the witness stand against Milne.

Milne “was in tears,” another mother said.

Wallin’s expertise did not come cheaply. Milne said that the attorney charged $50,000 to defend him against the misdemeanor charges and noted that he had not yet received the final bill.

Wallin refused to return repeated telephone calls from The Times.

Michael Gallups, president of the Saddleback Valley Educators Assn., the local unit of the California Teachers Assn. to which Milne belongs, said that the union will contribute $25,000 to Milne’s legal expenses, an automatic procedure because of the acquittal. The union will also contribute about $12,000 toward his defense in the administrative hearing, Milne said.

During the administrative hearing, two teachers from outside the district--one chosen by the school board and the other by Milne--will join an administrative law judge in deciding whether to uphold Milne’s dismissal.

In Milne’s Municipal Court trial, the burden of proving the defendant’s guilt fell to Deputy Dist. Atty. Kevin Haskins, 27 years old and trying his first child-molestation case.

“I felt I had an obligation to prosecute, an obligation to the kids who went to school,” Haskins said. “I don’t think that the kids should have to worry about whether a teacher is going to touch their breast or their bottom on a given day.”

But Haskins was unable to convey that concern to the jury.

“Quite frankly,” said jury foreman Thomas, “the (deputy) D.A. did a lousy job.

“As a juror, you can’t ask questions. To me and to the other jurors, we would be sitting there waiting for him (the deputy D.A.) to ask the next logical question. But he wouldn’t. It was very difficult, because we couldn’t just make assumptions.”

The parents of the girls who testified against Milne added that their experience with the case has lessened their faith in a judicial system that they believe protects the rights of the defendant over those of the victim.

“As soon as (my daughter) found out that the court had found him innocent,” said the mother of one of the girls, “the first reaction was, ‘Mom, is he coming back to school? I’m not going back to school if he comes back to school.’ ”

Added another Olivewood parent, Cindy Shacklett, whose daughter was not involved in the trial: “There is a big difference between a pat on the back and a hand up the blouse. . . . And if sexual harassment is disallowed in the workplace, then why would we allow this type of behavior in schools, where the children are less assertive?”

But where Shacklett sees sexual harassment, Milne’s supporters, including his former wife, see a dedicated teacher whose career has been jeopardized by near hysteria over child abuse, a climate, they say, where almost any kind of physical contact between student and teacher could be suspect.

At Olivewood Elementary School and in the middle-class community that surrounds it, the debate over the fate of Keith Sheldon Milne is far from over.