Ex-Coach Faces Trial Over Sex Charges

Accused of carrying on an affair with a 16-year-old student, a former Simi Valley High School track coach has been ordered to face a felony trial on charges of having unlawful sex with a minor.

Robert America, 22, is to be arraigned July 8 on 10 felony counts that could get him up to six years in state prison if he is convicted, Deputy Dist. Atty. Adam Pearlman said.

“I’m innocent of all 10 counts,” America said Friday in an interview.

“I did go out with the girl for a period, but I ended a relationship that I did have with her well before I began a contract with Simi Valley High School. . . . We didn’t have sex, and nothing that could even be misinterpreted, even by somebody who’s 16 or 17, as any type of sexual contact whatsoever.”

But Pearlman said that America was a 21-year-old assistant track coach at Simi Valley High in 1996 when he began having sexual relations with the team member.

“She was recruited by him to be on the track team, then they started to date,” Pearlman said. “The victim [has] testified . . . that they spoke numerous times about their relative ages and that it was illegal.”

But even after America was fired in spring 1996 over what he said was his friendship with the girl, he continued having sexual relations with her, according to Pearlman.

Pearlman said the relationship ended in December, but it was not until April that the girl admitted to her mother that she had had the affair and her mother called police.

The felony charges correspond to alleged incidents of sex between the two, which purportedly took place at her parents’ house, in a car and in the track equipment room at the high school where America lived briefly while he was homeless, Pearlman said.

But America says he ended the relationship in January of 1996. He said he was allowed to use the shower and a locker at the school, but that he never slept there.

And he said that the girl’s parents--who employed him briefly in their electronics business--filed the criminal complaint against him when his friendship with them deteriorated after the breakup with their daughter.