Coach Held on Charges of Molesting Students

In the second report of alleged child molestation by a Los Angeles Unified School District employee in as many weeks, a dean’s assistant and coach at San Fernando High School was arrested on suspicion of committing lewd acts with three students, police said Wednesday.

Abel Ramirez, 34, was taken into custody at the school at 4 p.m. Tuesday on suspicion of molesting three male students, ages 15 and 16, over a two-year period, said Lt. Rick Papke of the Los Angeles Police Department.

Ramirez, who worked at the school for 14 years and coached two of the boys on the junior varsity baseball team, allegedly molested the students at off-campus locations or on city streets inside his car, Papke said.

“We are looking at multiple incidents,” said LAPD Det. Corinne Malinka. “We also believe that there are additional victims out there, and we are asking them or any witnesses to contact us.”

The students told detectives that their relationship with Ramirez was consensual until he recently began to threaten them, prompting them to report him to authorities, Papke said.

“The information we are getting from [the boys] is that the suspect was getting more and more demanding and more and more violent,” Papke said. “There were threats, but we can’t go into that.”

Ramirez, who is scheduled to be arraigned today in San Fernando Municipal Court on multiple felony counts of child molestation, is being held at the Foothill station jail in lieu of $340,000 bail.

Officials from the Los Angeles Unified School District on Wednesday declined to comment on the allegations because of personnel and privacy issues, but noted that employees who are arrested usually go on unpaid leave.

Principal Philip Saldivar said he

knew little about the allegations that Ramirez faces, including the identities of the victims, but said the school is cooperating with police.

“I was shocked,” said Saldivar, who first heard of the allegations Tuesday afternoon when police came to the 4,470-student campus and took Ramirez into custody.

Most faculty and staff only learned of the allegations facing the 1982 alumnus Wednesday afternoon when Saldivar sent out a written announcement.

“[The allegations] trouble me,” Saldivar said. “These are strong allegations, a person’s character could be ruined.”

Ramirez, of San Fernando, has worked at the school since 1986 as a clerk in the dean’s office and as an assistant coach in baseball and softball. He is now an assistant coach of girls junior varsity softball.

In his six years as principal of San Fernando High, Saldivar said, the school has never had any serious complaints about Ramirez.

Saldivar described him as “a very jovial, gregarious individual, a hard worker, punctual, supportive of the school staff and motivating as a coach.”

But police told a different story, alleging that Ramirez was a typical pedophile who used his coaching position to gain the trust of the boys and then take advantage of them.

Ramirez befriended the boys in 1997 and allegedly began molesting them over time in separate incidents, detectives said. On Monday, detectives said they learned of the crimes after one of his victims reported the sexual contact to a pastor, who informed the boy’s parents and then police.

Ramirez’s arrest follows molestation charges against a special education teacher last month.

Florine Strimel, a 35-year-old instructor at Granada Hills High School, pleaded not guilty in Glendale Municipal Court to seven felony charges that she had sex with one of her 17-year-old students.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials acknowledged that police had investigated Strimel on similar allegations when she was a substitute teacher in 1996 and 1997. The allegations were not substantiated and no action was taken, district officials said.

Police would not disclose if Ramirez had a criminal record but said he was not a registered sex offender.

Times staff writer Eric Sondheimer contributed to this story.