Police Seek Ex-Teacher in Alleged Rape of Student

Los Angeles police are searching for a former San Juan Capistrano schoolteacher suspected of raping a 16-year-old student after giving her champagne and marijuana at his Westwood apartment, authorities said Wednesday.

Michael Clarence Hays, 36, of Los Angeles was suspended with pay from the St. Margaret Episcopal School in December 1995 after Michael C. Hays a 16-year-old student told school officials that the English teacher had begun a relationship with her and that the relationship culminated in rape, Los Angeles Det. Paul Bishop said.

Hays, who is named in an arrest warrant charging him with rape, resigned a day afterward, school officials said.

Hays, in a preliminary interview with police on Dec. 15, denied that he raped the girl, Bishop said. Four days later, investigators said they received a letter from Hays saying that he would turn himself in if he becomes a suspect.

After further investigation, police searched Hays’ apartment and found evidence that they said incriminated him.

“We’re hoping he’ll turn himself in,” Bishop said. “We’ve made several attempts to contact him through his address and another address that he gave us, all without success.”

Hays taught English and religion at the private school for seven years, during which he was “very popular” with the students, said Mark Campaigne, headmaster of the school.

“He was very creative,” Campaigne said. “A lot of students have said that his class really got them thinking.”

In 1993 or 1994, he began a relationship with a 14-year-old girl, who is now 16, writing her letters and asking her to meet him at various places on and off campus, Bishop said.

“We have about a dozen or so long rambling letters that he wrote,” Bishop said. “They include some poetry and passionate passages . . . obscene materials or anything.”

The relationship culminated in October 1995, when the man allegedly drove the girl to his Westwood apartment across from UCLA and offered champagne and marijuana, investigators said.

Two months later, the teenager talked to another 16-year-old student at the school who also had received letters from the teacher, and both went to school administrators with their stories.

An investigation has been launched by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department into Hays’ relationship with the second student.

Detectives are searching for other possible victims, Wilkerson said.

Detectives described Hays as white, 5-feet-11, 165 pounds, with blue eyes and long, blond hair, which he sometimes ties in a ponytail. He also has been seen wearing wire-rimmed glasses.

Anyone with information in the case can call (310) 575-8441.