Case Dropped, but Damage Already Done

The “nice guy” schoolteacher/coach is accused of fondling four students. Many of his colleagues and friends don’t believe it, but they also know that molesters don’t advertise their inclinations.

And, after all, the police investigated the allegations and thought there was enough there to send their findings to the district attorney. And the district attorney’s office thought there was enough there to file charges.

So, what are we to think about the coach who is accused and set to stand trial? If you’re a coach, better to be accused of slugging, head-butting or choking a player than to have fondled them.

Just ask Indiana coach Bobby Knight.

But let’s talk instead about Craig Coleman, former physical education teacher and basketball coach at Brea Junior High School.

This week, the district attorney’s office dropped year-old molestation charges against Coleman. It did so the day Coleman’s trial was to begin, the result of information Coleman’s attorney brought forward. Both sides agreed that at least some of Coleman’s accusers might have had significant credibility problems on the witness stand.

I criticized the district attorney’s office last year for taking a teacher-molestation case to court that the jury foreman later said should never have gone to trial.

So, it’s only fair to laud prosecutors for sparing Coleman a trial once they were convinced they couldn’t get a conviction.

That, at least, is progress in this highly explosive realm of teacher-molestation cases.

But the system isn’t perfect. The unfortunate reality is that maybe it can’t be.

Coleman is free, but in a sense he’s stood trial for the last year. He’s been on unpaid leave during that period and was forced to take a job outside teaching.

And given human nature, who knows what people think of him--even if charges have been dropped.

I had one general question for attorneys on both sides of the Coleman case, as well as police and school officials: Is there a way to get child molesters out of the schools but somehow reduce the time the falsely accused remain under suspicion?

Rick King is the assistant district attorney in charge of these kinds of cases. He says his office took heed when juries acquitted teachers in a couple of recent cases and that “we’ll continue to try to make these things quicker.”

The law provides, in essence, for putting such cases on a faster track. King says that might be done. In another case, King says, prosecutors put young witnesses on the stand at the preliminary trial and dropped charges afterward when their testimony didn’t seem strong enough.

Coleman lamented the time he has been under suspicion, but his own lawyer concedes that much of that was attributable to his court schedule and, therefore, not the district attorney’s fault.

However, defense attorney Stephen Klarich says that doesn’t address whether charges should have been brought in the first place. A more thorough investigation by police or the district attorney’s office, Klarich says, could have produced the information he got that led to dropping of charges.

That sounds like common-sense advice. Yes, it’s the defense attorney’s job to find exculpatory evidence, but in the highly charged atmosphere of teachers accused of molesting students, police and prosecutors ought to be looking for the same kind of evidence.

If they don’t, by the time a jury sorts it out, a teacher can be out of work for months and see his or her career disappear.

“It’s so protracted that it destroys an innocent person in terms of loss of job, income, stature, reputation,” says Brea Olinda Unified School District Assistant Supt. Gary Goff. A former high school principal, Goff has seen these kinds of cases close up and says the truth of the charges--with high stakes for both student and teacher--is sometimes difficult to determine.

I know I’m looking for perfection in an imperfect system.

But it’s heartening that King’s office isn’t defensive about such things. I presume he knows we all want the dangerous teachers out of the classrooms and that these can be difficult prosecutions. I’m also convinced that prosecutors--with their immense power to charge--hold the keys to improvements in this system of ours.

We don’t ask for much.

Put the bad guys in jail. As for the “good guys,” all we ask is that we never see their names in the paper linked to charges that don’t hold water.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers can reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.