Teacher Served Time for Child Abuse, Church Says : Investigation: Episcopal officials say Jeffrey H. Raker, accused of assaulting four Van Nuys students, was imprisoned in Guatemala after similar allegations surfaced at orphanage where he worked.

A Van Nuys elementary schoolteacher charged this week with molesting four male students was jailed in the 1980s in Guatemala on child-abuse allegations while working at an orphanage run by an Episcopal priest, church officials said Wednesday.

The teacher, Jeffrey Herbert Raker, who taught at Hazeltine Avenue School until last week, had worked at the orphanage in Guatemala for several years before it was taken over by the church, the officials said.

Raker, 47, spent more than a year in the Guatemala jail and was released through the intervention of American friends, said James Solheim, public affairs director of the New York-based Episcopal Church.

Los Angeles police arrested Raker on Friday after a Hazeltine student told a playground supervisor about being molested, triggering an investigation that has yielded five victims, authorities said. Altogether, more than 20 boys have been interviewed by police.

Raker pleaded not guilty at his arraignment Tuesday in Van Nuys Municipal Court to charges that he molested four students, ages 8 through 11, all of whom he had taught at Hazeltine or coached after school.

“We do expect to get additional filings and we do expect to find additional victims,” LAPD Officer Rosibel Ferrufino said. Police allege that Raker molested the students on campus, at his Studio City home and on camping trips.

Raker faces more than 50 years in prison if convicted of the current charges.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials on Wednesday sent five counselors to the school to conduct emergency counseling sessions for students and teachers.

“His class is a basket case,” said Hazeltine Principal Pat Abney. “There has been a lot of crying and we’ve been passing out Kleenex all morning long.”

Distraught fifth- and sixth-graders had hoped to telephone Raker in jail, but settled instead on writing him letters of support, Abney said. Students were also preoccupied with figuring out who accused Raker, school officials said.

“They want to know who said something bad about their teacher,” Abney said. “They don’t believe it.”

LAUSD spokesman Bill Rivera said his district runs fingerprint checks on all job applicants--including Raker--to ensure that they have never been convicted of a felony in the United States. But the district has no way of checking whether applicants have been convicted of a felony in another country, he said.

Raker had listed references from two elementary schools and a high school in Guatemala when he applied for a job with the school district, receiving “very positive” recommendations from each school, Rivera said. Raker also received a glowing review from the Peace Corps, in which he served from 1972 to 1976 in Guatemala.

Before beginning work for LAUSD, Raker spent about 15 years in Guatemala, authorities said.

He was not a missionary for the American church or for the diocese of Guatemala, Episcopal Church officials said Wednesday. But he worked for an Episcopal priest who operated an orphanage, Hogar Los Ninos, Solheim said.

“Raker worked with an Episcopal priest who worked independently of the diocese in Guatemala. The priest had his own school there,” Solheim said. “An American woman working there reported this guy to the Guatemalan authorities.”

Parents at the Hazeltine Avenue school Wednesday were issued flyers saying a “serious allegation” was being made against a teacher who has been removed from the campus.

Several parents who received the flyers said they were shocked by Raker’s arrest. “It’s bad enough that you can’t send your kids out to play on the street, but now at school?” said the mother of a first-grade boy.

Other parents who know Raker say he was an energetic teacher who always had time for his students. “I don’t think it’s real,” said Ernestina Guevara, whose daughter was in Raker’s class. “My daughter would tell me every day how good he was. I’m confused.”

Times staff writer John Dart contributed to this story.