Students Rally in Support of Accused Coach : Ventura: The investigation continues into allegations of sexual misconduct by the high school instructor.

Ventura High School swimmers and water polo players met with school officials Friday to express their support for Coach Dale Hahn, who is targeted for dismissal over allegations he had sex with two students and made inappropriate comments to others.

Ventura police, meanwhile, said they have only begun to focus on allegations against the 44-year-old coach, who has been on paid leave since before Thanksgiving.

“We haven’t even established a crime occurred at this point,” said Sgt. Bob Anderson.

Hahn could not be reached for comment Friday, and a friend said he had left town for a few days. But the coach’s lawyer called the allegations by the Ventura Unified School District unfounded.

“He’s shocked, upset and concerned,” said Richard Schwab, Hahn’s attorney. “He said there was absolutely no merit to those charges.”

Since the allegations surfaced Wednesday, a number of current and former students have defended Hahn as a talented teacher and dedicated coach. But others, particularly former water polo players, said he could display a tremendous poolside temper and sometimes yelled obscenities at his athletes.

On Friday, 14 members of the swim team and three water polo players met for an hour with Supt. Joseph Spirito to voice their support for Hahn. They presented Spirito with a petition signed by every member of the swim team.

“We all back him 100%,” said sophomore Lindsay Crabbe, a varsity swim team member who met with Spirito. “We said he’s never made any moves toward us. . . . He’s always respected us and been like a counselor and a father.”

Crabbe said school officials told the students a replacement coach has not yet been chosen. Swim season starts in late February.

“He’s the backbone of our swim team and without him we don’t have much of a team,” Crabbe said.

Spirito and an attorney for the school district said they were not surprised by the students’ reactions.

“They really do want to do the right thing and, of course, they don’t know all the information,” Spirito said. “They’re operating from how they’ve been treated and they probably were treated very positively by him.”

Mary Jo McGrath, an expert on sexual harassment who was hired by the Ventura district to investigate Hahn, said teachers fired for sexual misconduct are frequently very popular among students.

“They befriend the kids, they’re kind, they’re helpful. They are some of the closest people to students,” she said. “It’s almost like an opportunistic crime.”

McGrath said she is concerned about all the Ventura students affected by the allegations against Hahn, but particularly those who are his strongest supporters.

“Are they going to have the capability to hold all those mixed messages in their mind?” she asked.

The district filed a list of 90 allegations against Hahn as its first step toward suspending him without pay and ultimately firing him. Hahn is entitled to a full hearing before an administrative law judge before the dismissal is final.

Ventura police began their investigation of Hahn when school officials contacted officers in mid-December. But because of a spate of violent crimes last month--including two unsolved homicides--detectives have had little time to devote to the accusations against Hahn.

Sgt. Anderson said Friday that he has no idea how long the investigation will last. “It could be very short. It could be very long. There’s all kinds of possibilities.”

Anderson said he has contacted four or five people in the case, but has not yet interviewed the two girls identified by school officials as having sex with Hahn. According to a document filed this week with the state Office of Administrative Hearings, one of those sexual encounters occurred in December, 1988, and the other took place last fall.

The document said the 1988 incident involved a girl who was a senior in Hahn’s chemistry class, the list of allegations said. He is accused of having sex with her at his house after inviting her over to watch a movie and after kissing her the month before.

In the most recent incident, Hahn had sex with the student after taking her out to dinner, the document said.