School Board Member Faces Molestation Trial

A Ventura County school board member will be tried on charges of child molestation, although the alleged acts occurred more than 30 years ago, a judge has ruled.

Superior Court Judge Donald Coleman ruled there was credible evidence suggesting 74-year-old Albert Rosen may have molested a 6-year-old girl between 1966 and 1970.

But Coleman dismissed two charges involving the molestation of a then 9-year-old boy. The man told a Los Angeles County sheriff’s detective of the alleged molestation in 1997, which meant authorities had one year to file a case. Because they didn’t, Rosen cannot be charged now, Coleman ruled.

“Basically,” Coleman said, “I think Los Angeles dropped the ball.”

Before the ruling, both alleged victims, now adults, testified that Rosen, a retired schoolteacher, sexually abused them on several occasions.

The woman, 42, said she remembers the abuse beginning when she was about 6 at a vacant home on Bernard Street in Simi Valley. Rosen, who owned the house, would take the girl and the boy to the site, she said.

“He would tell us we needed to help him water the trees,” she said. “He said he was growing a forest and he needed help watering the trees.”

But at some point, the woman said, Rosen led her to a bedroom where he kept child pornography magazines. He told her the acts he wanted her to perform were “normal.”

Some of the acts also allegedly occurred at night as she slept at the Rosen family home in Simi Valley. She often awoke with Rosen fondling her, she testified.

The other alleged victim, now 44, testified that he recalled being molested at the Bernard Street house, which Rosen had said he planned to turn into a preschool. He said he was about 8 or 9 when the abuse began.

The man said he told a therapist about the incidents in 1981, but did not report them to police because he thought they had happened too long ago to prosecute.

The allegations against Rosen also surfaced during his divorce proceedings in the 1980s.

And 11 years ago, an anonymous letter was sent to the Ventura County Board of Education when Rosen was first elected to the board. But after an investigation by detectives, who described the allegations as “credible,” the case was dropped because the statute of limitations had expired.

A 1994 law, however, erased the statute of limitations for molestation cases involving adults who were abused as juveniles. The male accuser learned of that law in 2000 and decided to file a complaint with the Simi Valley Police Department. Police launched an investigation and uncovered the second alleged victim. Rosen will now face trial for that molestation.

The man’s legal standing was different, however. In 1997, Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies arrested him on suspicion of owning child pornography. During an interview with detectives, he said he had been molested as a child.

Rosen’s defense attorney, Robert Sandbach, argued Monday in court that the man’s admission is considered a report to authorities and that deputies had one year to file charges or the case must be dropped. The Sheriff’s Department did not follow up on the charge.