Police Hunt School’s Founders in Sex Case

Ty Yiyara claimed to be a former Air Force captain with a master’s degree in social work from Dallas Baptist University. He and his wife, Tisa, founded a private Afrocentric school in South Los Angeles two years ago, saying they wanted to improve the educational atmosphere for inner-city children.

Their Enlightened Minds School was granted nonprofit status by the state and received funding from a national scholarship program. Last year, Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan awarded the school founders a proclamation praising them for their “outstanding work as educators and mentors.”

But police say Yiyara is an impostor and a convicted sex offender with no apparent military record, whose real name is Joseph Horace Green. They say that the master’s degree, which he posted at the school, was bought through a mail-order catalog.

Green, 34, and his wife, whose real name is Channell Nicola Warren, 25, disappeared in early April after a 16-year-old student at the school told police they had sexually molested her.

When the couple abandoned the school, they left five full-time teachers out of work and the parents of 50 students scrambling to continue their lessons for the remainder of the school year.

“There was a real Jekyll and Hyde thing going on,” said Los Angeles Police Department Det. Wes Potter, who has been trying to locate the couple since prosecutors issued arrest warrants April 12. A nationwide search is underway for the couple, who face a total of 13 sex charges.

No state or local authority ever questioned the couple’s background when the school was established because there are few regulations for private schools. Even accreditation is optional.

“Nobody regulates them,” said Roger Wolfertz, an attorney with the state Department of Education.

As disturbing new allegations about the couple’s extracurricular activities have emerged, a few parents of students at Enlightened Minds are trying to start a new school under a different name and in a new location.

“We are trying to turn this tragedy into a triumph,” said Nana Gyamfi, an attorney who has become a spokeswoman for other shellshocked parents.

Some of the students at the kindergarten-through-12th-grade school paid the $250 per month tuition with scholarships from the Children’s Scholarship Fund, a national philanthropic program for low-income children.

The parents said they didn’t raise many question about the couple’s qualifications because the teachers were licensed and provided a good educational alternative to woeful public schools.

But some parents complained that the administrators didn’t put enough money into books and maintenance of the school.

“I’m extremely upset at what has happened,” said the mother of two students, ages 6 and 10, who asked that her name not be published.

According to police, Green moved to Lancaster from Houston several years ago and worked as a janitor at a hospital.

In 1996, he was arrested and charged in the Antelope Valley with three counts of sexually molesting a minor, according to court records. As part of a plea bargain, he pleaded no contest to one count of sexual battery and was sentenced to two years in Chino state prison, records show. He was also required to register as a sex offender for life.

Not long after he was released from prison in 1998, Green and Warren showed up in South Los Angeles, assuming the names Ty and Tisa Yiyara. To open Enlightened Minds School, they leased a 10,000-square-foot commercial building on West 54th Street, a busy commercial boulevard with storefront churches and hair salons.

No Military, College Records Are Found

Military officials at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis could not immediately confirm if Green served in the Air Force. But Det. Potter said he found no record that Green had spent any time in the military or in college.

Potter said that when Green was arrested on the Lancaster sexual battery charges, he admitted having bought his degree through a catalog.

For opening and operating a private school, the state requires only that a school administrator file a two-page affidavit, providing basic information such as the student enrollment and staff size. Warren filed affidavits for the last two school years under the name Tisa Yiyara.

In the document, she described herself as the school superintendent and principal, but parents say Green acted as the superintendent.

The affidavit, however, required Warren to certify under penalty of perjury that the school had no employee with a conviction for a felony or other violent crime. Because Green’s name was not mentioned on the affidavit, state officials had no way of knowing that a registered sex offender was acting as the school’s superintendent.

Police say Green registered as a sex offender with Lancaster police under the so-called Megan’s Law. But Los Angeles police say he failed to tell them that he then was living with Warren in the Mid-City area of Los Angeles under the name Ty Yiyara. By law, sex offenders must report to local police every time they move.

In August, The Times published a feature story about an elaborate mural that a local artist had volunteered to paint at the school.

Ty Yiyara told The Times that he started the school after retiring from the Air Force because “we were concerned about the results of public schools in this area.”

In response to the news article, Mayor Riordan issued proclamations in October praising the muralist and the school administrators.

A spokesman for Riordan said this week: “It is unfortunate that so many people were misled, especially when it involves children.”

Using her alias, Warren filed documents with the California secretary of state’s office to create a nonprofit public benefit corporation for the school.

But investigators discovered that the two were also operating an online advertising business, using the school’s phone number as the contact number for the business.

According to police and real estate records, the couple invested in several South Los Angeles properties and bought a four-bedroom Mid-City home for $290,000. The couple also owned a white, 37-foot 1999 Fleetwood recreational vehicle, worth about $100,000, Potter said. Police believe the couple may be living or traveling in the motor home.

Soliciting Online for a Woman

While investigating the online marketing business, Potter found that the couple had also been soliciting at several Internet sites for women to join them in “a loving relationship.”

On one Internet message board, the couple placed an ad that said: “We are looking for a pretty Russian girl who is bisexual and would love to be with a black couple in Los Angeles, California, and be a second wife.” On the couple’s home page, they also invited women to join them “for a close friendship.”

Investigators say Green’s 16-year-old victim from the school was molested in the couple’s RV, away from the campus.

The LAPD’s juvenile division is interviewing parents and other students to determine if other children were molested by the couple.

“Every day that they are out there, there are children in danger,” Potter said.

Many of the students left the school as soon as the allegations were raised. When the school administrators disappeared, so did many of the transcripts needed so the remaining students could continue at other schools.

Hoping to continue the educations of the remaining 20 students, several former teachers and parents have begun to teach at a borrowed commercial building in South Los Angeles. Those parents and the teachers are now planning fund-raisers to start a new Afrocentric school under the name Adoma Learning Center and Benu Academy. But money is tight and the future of the proposed new school is uncertain.

“It’s really unfair to these children to put them through this,” said the mother of two students.