Testimony Starts in Ex-Teacher’s Seduction Trial

With taped snippets of a phone conversation and eyewitness testimony, prosecutors Wednesday set out to prove that a former teacher seduced a boy in her Thousand Oaks neighborhood when he was just 15 years old.

But Gloria Goldman’s attorney told a Superior Court jury that the accusations were untrue, calling them the “locker-room” boasts of a troubled youth who wanted to impress his friends.

“He never took back the stories because, you see, in the locker room, you can never take those back,” defense attorney Neil Quinn said.

Goldman, 37, was charged last year with 19 counts of oral copulation with a person under the age of 18, 11 counts of lewd acts against a child and two counts of unlawful sexual intercourse. She is accused of having a 2 1/2-year relationship with the youth, now a 19-year-old Navy seaman. Goldman has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Since the man is an alleged victim of a sex crime, his name is not being used.

During the first day of testimony Wednesday, the man’s younger brother said he had once seen Goldman fondle and perform sex acts on him. The victim’s family and Goldman’s were close, the witness said, and the two brothers were staying at her house while their mother was in Tahiti.

He was sleeping next to his brother on a fold-out bed, the boy said, when he was awakened by voices. In spite of what he saw, he pretended to be asleep, he said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Mark Pachowicz also produced a taped phone conversation in which the victim can be heard discussing the investigation with a woman identified as Goldman. In it, the woman can be heard telling the victim not to testify.

“You need to stop it,” she said. The victim should tell investigators, she said, that “pursuing this would not help--it would hurt. It would hurt you. It would hurt me.”

Quinn pointed out that on the tape Goldman repeatedly said nothing had happened. And he noted that the youth had, at one point, changed his story and told investigators his accusations were false.

“That’s what this case is about: Is [the victim] a reliable, truthful person, or is he not?” Quinn asserted.

Goldman’s 15-year-old daughter, Charissa Beall, testified that her mother and the victim often met to talk about his problems. She told the jury about one instance in which they spoke behind a locked bedroom door.

Charissa knocked on the door to talk with her mother, and Goldman opened the door and said they would soon be finished talking. A few minutes later, she said, the two walked downstairs.

“It’s not possible that my mom had any kind of sexual encounter with [the victim],” Charissa said. “She would not do that.”

During a break in testimony, Goldman said she was proud of her daughter for taking the stand, although she wished it hadn’t been necessary.

She also said she was happy that the case had finally come to trial. The charges came to light in May, 1994, after the youth told his story to a religious adviser. In July of that year, a Superior Court judge dismissed the charges, saying that another judge had ruled improperly during Goldman’s preliminary hearing. A month later, a Ventura County grand jury indicted her.

“I’m glad the truth is finally going to come out now,” she said. “I want to stop thinking about it.”