By Jonathan Friedman
Staff Writer
October 5, 2009 -- Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District officials reported 123 suspected child abuse cases during the 2008-09 school year, according to the Annual Child Abuse Report that the Board of Education reviewed at its meeting last week. One of the cases involved a District employee.
The reported abuses were of alleged incidents that took place away from school, except for the one involving a District employee. The report broke down the allegations by type and school level.
The most reported cases involved elementary school children (52). Thirty-seven involved middle school students and 34 were regarding high school students. There were no reported cases from the Head Start preschool program or the children’s centers.
Physical abuse was the most reported, with 77 cases. Twenty reports involved emotional abuse, 15 were about “general neglect” and 11 involved sexual abuse.
Board members did not comment on the report.
The only discussion came from Board member Oscar de la Torre, who asked if the District had ever been sued for a wrongful allegation against a parent. Deputy Superintendent Mike Matthews said this has never happened, as far as he knows.
According to the District’s Child Abuse Prevention and Reporting policy, which was revised last year, teachers and other SMMUSD employees who work directly with children are supposed to report suspected cases to law enforcement or county child welfare officials within 24 hours. The employees are not supposed to investigate the matters on their own.
The District policy, which also mandates training for District employees who might need to report abuses, was revised last year following the arrest of longtime Lincoln Middle School ELS teacher Thomas Beltran on charges that he had sexually molested at least nine female students. He pleaded guilty to 10 counts of child molestation in December, and is currently serving a 14-year prison sentence without the possibility of parole.
The Beltran case became more scandalous when it was soon revealed that Lincoln officials and the Santa Monica Police Department had investigated the teacher two years earlier regarding a sexual abuse allegation, but it was not reported to District officials.
One month after Beltran’s arrest and the revelation of the 2006 investigation, Lincoln principal Tristan Komlos and assistant principal Francis Costanzo were transferred to new positions within the District. Komlos was named principal at John Muir Elementary School and Costanzo became a "principal on special assignment." District officials denied the Beltran case was the reason for the transfers.
