Accused Counselor Suspended

A prominent educational psychologist who provided counseling to students in Los Angeles Unified schools was suspended by the district Friday after a woman alleged that he molested her son more than a hundred times two decades ago in Colorado.

An attorney for psychologist Peter J. Ruthenbeck said last month that his client was cooperating with an investigation by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences, which licenses educational psychologists, but declined to comment on the allegations. The board has a policy of not confirming that it is investigating a licensee.

Paula Morgan Johnson said that after her son broke his 20-year silence earlier this year about the alleged molestation, she confronted Ruthenbeck in a pained phone call. She said that he then mailed her a handwritten three-page apology. She provided copies of that letter to The Times and the Board of Behavioral Sciences.

Ruthenbeck’s attorney, B. Robert Farzad, said his client would neither confirm nor deny that he molested the boy or wrote the letter.

Eileen Skone-Rees, administrative coordinator of the school district’s Nonpublic Services Department, said she received a complaint Friday from Morgan Johnson and immediately suspended Ruthenbeck pending an investigation.

The district said Ruthenbeck worked an average of three days a week, providing counseling to deaf and hard-of-hearing children identified as needing psychological help. The sessions were conducted one-on-one or in small groups.

A bill for services Ruthenbeck submitted to the district in June showed that he worked at Gardena and Fairfax high schools, Carnegie Middle School in Carson, and El Sereno Middle School and Robert Hill Lane Elementary School in Monterey Park.

The unsigned letter, sent in an envelope bearing Ruthenbeck’s name and return address in Huntington Beach, expresses great remorse, although the writer never explicitly admits molesting a child.

“I am so, so very sorry,” it says. “Whenever I think about that period in my life, I wonder what was wrong with me.

“You asked me what I was feeling. Since your call I have felt overwhelming shame, guilt and sadness.”

The writer says that after leaving Colorado, he changed.

“You asked if there had been others. Somehow after leaving Boulder, and then going away to school, I developed the strength and self-control necessary to make sure it never happened again.

“What was wrong with me back then is still a part of me today, but it is buried very deeply. I have learned to not allow myself to indulge in conscious fantasies, but I still sometimes have dreams that I remember when I wake up. I don’t know that there is a way to control this. However, I assure you that I have not acted on these thoughts since I left Colorado.”

Morgan Johnson, 56, said that she and her 35-year-old son first reported the alleged molestation to police in Boulder, Colo., but were told that the 10-year statute of limitations for prosecution had passed.

Ruthenbeck, who is married and has two children, left Colorado in 1985. Until recently, he served as president of the California Assn. of Licensed Educational Psychologists. He has worked for the Los Angeles Unified School District for at least 12 years. Ruthenbeck’s 2005-06 contract allowed him to bill the district up to a maximum of $212,000 per year depending on his client load.

Ruthenbeck, 47, does not undergo performance evaluations. Skone-Rees said that her department, which oversees his contract, had never received a complaint about him until Morgan Johnson’s phone call. His contract could be terminated depending on the results of school district and state investigations, Skone-Rees said.

Scott Johnson, now a carpenter in Boulder, said he met Ruthenbeck in 1978, when the older man was assigned to him in a Big Brother program. Johnson was 8; Ruthenbeck was 19. Johnson said Ruthenbeck began molesting him several months later and continued until he was 15.

Morgan Johnson, who raised her son alone, said she viewed Ruthenbeck as a surrogate father to her son.

Her son said in an interview that Ruthenbeck “was real outgoing. He’s one of those guys where everybody says they just love Pete.”

After becoming his Big Brother, Johnson said, Ruthenbeck became his Little League coach, then his soccer coach, then leader of his Boy Scout troop. Johnson said he saw Ruthenbeck one to three times a week over those seven years. The two took camping trips, went on skiing weekends and made visits to Ruthenbeck’s family in Minnesota. Ruthenbeck also took him to church.

Morgan Johnson said her son’s Big Brother once took her to dinner for Mother’s Day.

“I’m very liberal and lived a more bohemian lifestyle,” said Morgan Johnson, who was then a social worker and is now a psychologist. “I really sought out someone that would give a straighter, more conservative perspective, to introduce him to things that I wouldn’t introduce him to. Pete was squeaky clean. I mean obnoxiously clean.”

Johnson said he saw the same thing: “He was the antithesis of my mom. My mom was New Age. She was really into my freedom. He just seemed to be a Republican type.”

Johnson said he had kept the molestation secret until April. He was on the phone with his mother, who lives in Boston. She sensed he was holding back when the conversation turned to Ruthenbeck. She asked her son whether the former Big Brother had ever “hurt him,” and his story tumbled out.

Morgan Johnson said she flew to Boulder a few days later and found a psychiatrist to provide her son intensive therapy. She said she then launched an effort to end Ruthenbeck’s professional and volunteer involvement with children.

On April 17, Johnson told a Boulder police officer that Ruthenbeck insisted they sleep in the same bed on overnight visits. According to Johnson’s statement to an investigator, “Pete would wait until he thought I was asleep. He would pull down my underpants, touch my penis and masturbate me. He would also put my hand on his penis while he masturbated himself.”

Johnson said Ruthenbeck molested him 15 to 20 times a year.

In the letter Morgan Johnson provided to investigators and The Times, the writer said, “I honestly thought that Scott was never aware of anything.”

Johnson said in an interview that he worried about breaking off contact with Ruthenbeck. “I knew that if I tried to retreat from the guy, people would start to ask questions because he was such a great guy. I was so scared that people would find out what he was doing.”

Their relationship ended in 1985 when Ruthenbeck moved to Washington, D.C., and later to California to finish his education and start his child psychology practice.

Since then, Johnson said, he has suffered emotional turmoil. He said he attempted to hang himself at age 17, still has bouts of shaking, and sleeps with his pants and belt on, all of which he blames on being molested.

“The therapy I’m getting since I told my mom has really made me aware of what he did,” said Johnson. “I have a lot of anxiety. It’s usually when I deal with someone in authority or who might be above me or if I have to confront someone. This guy has programmed me to feel below or not as good. He isolated and broke me down.”

Johnson said he has hired an attorney.

In the past, Ruthenbeck held contracts to work with students in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District in 2004, the Orange County Department of Education from 1998 through 2002, and the Kern High School District in Bakersfield this year.

A resume on file with the Orange County schools lists him as having previously worked as a school psychologist from 1986 to 1994 with the Whittier Area Cooperative Special Education Program, a resource shared by several school districts in the Whittier area.

Dave DeForest-Stalls, president of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Colorado Inc., said that after talking with Morgan Johnson for several weeks, he contacted the Big Brother groups closest to Ruthenbeck’s home to make sure he wasn’t volunteering there. “I have no reason to disbelieve Paula and Scott,” DeForest-Stalls said. “We are going to choose to believe them and do everything we can to support them.”

Reed Brannon, CEO and executive director of the Boy Scouts’ Longs Peak Council in Colorado, said he placed Ruthenbeck on a national watch list of people banned from working with the organization.

L.A. Unified’s Skone-Rees said she reported the allegations to the state Department of Education and the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services as well as to the licensing board.

When visited at his home recently, Ruthenbeck declined to discuss the allegations and referred questions to his attorney.

Johnson said that he knows that by going public with his allegations he may be “tearing someone’s family in half,” but then he recounted a story that he said was a sign of his recovery: “If I used to see someone doing something on a job site, and I knew they were doing something wrong, I probably would have waited until they left and fixed it. Now I say, ‘That’s not right.’ ”

Johnson has also recently begun to be mentored by a Boulder architect, the first time he has grown close to a male authority figure in years, his mother said.

In the letter Morgan Johnson received, the writer speculates about his actions:

“Thousands of times I have wondered how I ever let that happen. The only thing I have ever been able to come up with is that I was really messed up, and I hadn’t developed any self-control. I know this is really lame, but I can’t pretend I have any excuse because there is no excuse.

“Writing this letter took numerous attempts. There is so much more I would like to say but I don’t have the words for it.”

garrett.therolf@latimes.com