Compton School Aide Gets 6-Year Molestation Sentence

The Compton school district has launched an internal investigation to determine if school employees did all they could to protect students from a teacher’s aide who was sentenced to a six-year prison term Tuesday for having sex with a 13-year-old girl.

The aide, Twone Torri Flowers, 24, pleaded no contest in Compton Superior Court to committing a lewd and lascivious act on a child.

The girl, whose name is not being released because of her age, said that she and Flowers had sex at Enterprise Middle School during school hours a number of times and that Flowers fathered her child.

The girl made her allegations more than a year after three other students accused Flowers of molesting them. School officials came under fire this week when prosecutors disclosed that school officials allegedly discounted the earlier allegations and failed to notify law enforcement authorities as the law requires.

State-appointed administrator J. Jerome Harris said employees could face disciplinary action if he finds they acted improperly. “All of this happened before I got here,” said Harris, who assumed the district’s top job in February. “What I am trying to do is reconstruct after two years what transpired. Sometimes that’s not easy to do.”

He added that he would require school administrators to review procedures for handling molestation allegations. The district came under state control last July as a condition for receiving an emergency state loan.

In the earlier case, school officials accused the girls who complained about Flowers of lying, according to police reports based on interviews with the girls and their families, Deputy Dist. Atty. Sindee Kain-Kerker said. In addition, the teacher’s aide denounced the girls publicly and other students kicked, taunted and threatened two of the girls for complaining about Flowers, Kain-Kerker said.

Police said they learned of the earlier allegations from the alleged victims’ parents, who were dissatisfied with the school’s response. Prosecutors eventually concluded they did not have enough corroborating evidence to file charges against Flowers. The later case was different because the girl was pregnant and Flowers admitted having sex with her, Kain-Kerker said. Flowers worked for the district as recently as last November, district sources said.

The attorney for Flowers said she and her client would have no comment. Flowers appeared briefly in court Tuesday to enter his plea. He sat quietly, in blue prison clothes and with his head in hands, until ordered to stand during the sentencing.

“The defendant received six years and will probably be released after three years,” prosecutor Kain-Kerker said after the hearing. “The girl has a longer sentence. She’ll have to raise his child and deal with this trauma for the rest of her life.”