Ex-School Official Faces Child Porn Charges

A former administrator at a South Los Angeles middle school has admitted having improper sexual contact with five boys and may be responsible for other child molestations, a federal prosecutor charged in court Friday.

The allegation came during a bail hearing for Albert Pinedo, 59, of Alhambra, who surrendered to FBI agents to face charges of distributing child pornography over the Internet.

Pinedo, who had been employed as a teacher and administrator by the Los Angeles Unified School District since 1975, resigned in November after federal agents searched his home. At the time, he was assistant principal of Samuel Gompers Middle School.

Pinedo was charged Friday with sending 28 sexually explicit images of children to an undercover investigator whom he contacted in an Internet chat room frequented by pedophiles.

During a subsequent search of his home, FBI agents seized a computer containing an additional 106 child pornography images, most of them depicting young boys performing sexual acts on one another, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Daniel Saunders.

Saunders said Pinedo failed miserably when asked during a polygraph test if he had touched any minors for sexual gratification since becoming an educator.

At that point, the prosecutor said, Pinedo broke down and admitted performing sexual acts with the five boys, some as young as 11 and 13 years old, going back more than 20 years. The most recent incident was in 2000 with a 17-year-old boy in a shower room at Cal State L.A., the prosecutor said. Saunders said Pinedo failed a second polygraph test, in which he was asked if he had revealed the full extent of his sexual contact with children.

“There may be countless other victims,” Saunders told U.S. Magistrate Ralph Zarefsky on Friday, arguing that Pinedo is a danger to the community and should be denied bail.

The prosecutor also expressed concern about Pinedo’s orphaned 12-year-old nephew, who lives with him and his wife.

Zarefsky ultimately agreed to free Pinedo on $35,000 bond, but imposed a string of conditions, including placing him under house detention with electronic monitoring of his movements and relocating his 12-year-old nephew to another relative’s home. Pinedo also was ordered to immediately begin mental health counseling, refrain from using any computer with Internet access and to have no contact with any minors unless their legal guardians are present.

Saunders said any evidence found of molestation would be turned over to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, which has responsibility for prosecuting such crimes.