2 Owners of School Sought on Molestation Charges

Prosecutors have issued an arrest warrant for the owners of a private Crenshaw area school on charges that the couple sexually molested a 16-year-old student, authorities said Thursday.

Joseph Horace Green, 34, and his wife, Channell Nicola Warren, 25, who go by the aliases Ty and Tisa Yiyara, face a combined total of 13 counts of sexual charges, said Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles district attorney’s office.

Green and Warren are the owners and operators of Enlightened Minds School at 2700 W. 54th St., a kindergarten-through-12th-grade school with an Afrocentric curriculum. The school once taught as many as 200 students, but enrollment has dropped significantly since the allegations were raised two weeks ago, parents said.

Police say the alleged molestation did not occur at the school.

Green and Warren disappeared after the 16-year-old girl filed a criminal complaint March 30, said the Los Angeles Police Department’s Lt. Horace Frank. “Investigators are looking for them,” he said.

The district attorney’s Sex Crimes Division issued an arrest warrant Wednesday. Frank said police are investigating whether the charges should be broadened to include other students as possible victims.

Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan awarded the couple a commendation in October, praising them for “their outstanding work as educators and mentors to the students.”

Since Green and Warren disappeared, the school has been operated by a handful of teachers and parents. But many parents have already pulled their children from the school as decisions are made on whether or not to close it.

“We are reeling from all of this,” said Nana Gyamfi, an attorney and parent who has temporarily taken charge of the school. “We are trying to decide what to do.”

Gyamfi called the allegations shocking but said: “At this point they are just charges.”

In an interview with The Times in August, Green called himself Ty Yiyara and said he was a former Air Force captain. He said the couple started the school in 1997 because “we felt there was sort of a neglected educational atmosphere.”