Moreno Valley teacher charged with sexual abuse

A Moreno Valley middle school teacher was arrested Friday after four men told police he had molested them in the mid-1990s when they were young teenagers.

Prosecutors charged Donald Andrew Fay, 53, with 75 counts of sexual abuse relating to the allegations.

Two of the boys who made the allegations attended Landmark Middle School, where Fay worked, and at least one described Fay in court documents as an eighth-grade teacher.

Officials at the Moreno Valley Unified School District placed Fay on paid administrative leave Oct. 11, the day after Moreno Valley police began their investigation. He was switched to unpaid leave on Friday, a district spokesman said.

Fay joined the school district in September of 1983, first teaching social studies at the now-closed Alessandro Middle School and then moving to Landmark in September 1991 to preside over the on-campus suspension program.

Fay tutored students who were being disciplined, district spokesman Scott Johnson said.

The four young men told police they had sexual encounters with Fay at his home during the mid-1990s, court records show.

One former student said that when he was 12 he went over to Fay’s house with his bowling team for a pregame party to swim in Fay’s pool, watch TV and eat pizza. He told police that he was sexually abused when he separated from his teammates to lie down because he felt ill.

Another student alleged that Fay touched him inappropriately in 1992 while they were watching TV after Fay hired the then-12-year-old to do yard work and invited him to go swimming in his pool.

A third young man first contacted Moreno Valley police in 1997, but no charges were filed because of a lack of evidence, according to court documents. The man told police that he had been molested three times by Fay between 1994 and 1995 in Fay’s upstairs loft, according to court records.

That man also told Moreno Valley police that he once walked in on a sexual encounter between Fay and a 15-year-old. Investigators wrote in court documents that the 15-year-old initially denied the allegations because he and Fay were involved in a year-and-a-half “love affair” between 1992 and 1993, court documents said.

Police investigators say they recorded a phone conversation between Fay and the 15-year-old in which Fay told the young man that their affair had been “fabulous” and urged him not to tell anyone because he could “get in a lot of trouble,” according to court papers filed by the case detective.

Fay’s relatives could not be reached for comment. He was booked into Riverside County’s Robert Presley Detention Center on Friday morning on $100,000 bail and was expected to be arraigned next week.

The school district declined comment on the allegations.

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maeve.reston@latimes.com