Veteran Teacher Charged With 23 Counts of Molestation After Images Surface of Children Bound and Gagged
- Posted on January 31, 2012 at 5:00pm by
Tiffany Gabbay
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LOS ANGELES (The Blaze/AP) — A veteran elementary school teacher was arrested on horrifying child molestation charges after a film processor gave police photos showing blindfolded children with their mouths taped and cockroaches on their faces, authorities said Tuesday.
Mark Berndt, 61, was arrested Monday at his Torrance home and remained jailed on $2.3 million bail, according to a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department statement.
The charges involve 23 boys and girls ages 6 to 10 between 2008 and 2010.
The L.A. Times interviewed Berndt’s neighbors, who described the man as “perpetually nervous” and “skittish.”:
John McManus, who said he has known Mark Berndt for 20 years, said he saw the fired grade school teacher a month ago riding a tandem bicycle along the waterfront in Hermosa Beach with a young girl who appeared to be in her early teens.
Berndt seemed unnerved when McManus spotted him, the neighbor said, and later told him: “Don’t tell my sister I was with this young girl.”
The neighbor said Berndt told him the girl was one of his students and that they had ridden the bicycle nearly as far as Marina del Rey and back.
He said he frequently saw Berndt hanging out around the Redondo Beach pier, drinking beer and gawking at girls.
McManus, a 63-year-old retired chemical worker, described his longtime neighbor as skittish and nervous, a guy who generally kept to himself.
The investigation started when the film processor gave authorities some 40 photographs depicting blindfolded children in a classroom with their mouths taped shut.
Berndt worked for more than 30 years at Miramonte Elementary School in an unincorporated area of South Los Angeles before being fired as a result of the investigation. Miramonte serves a poor, mainly Hispanic neighborhood. More than half of its approximately 1,400 students are still learning English, according to the school’s website.
MyFoxLA provides a report:
Some of the photos showed Berndt with his arm around children or with his hand over their mouth.
Other pictures depicted girls with what appears to be a spoon up to their mouths as if they were going to ingest a clear-white liquid.
Sheriff’s Lt. Carlos Marquez of the Special Victims Bureau said it was determined the children were given semen on a spoon or on a cookie. A blue plastic spoon and container found in trash in Berndt’s classroom tested positive for semen, the sheriff’s statement said.
None of the photos showed the students actually eating the semen, but Marquez said the children reported they didn’t like the taste.
Authorities are recommending the children be tested for sexually transmitted diseases.
Some of the children’s mouths and faces had large, live Madagascar-type cockroaches on them, according to the statement.
The incidents occurred during school hours but not all the children were students of Berndt, Marquez said.
None of the alleged victims told anyone about the incidents and photos, Marquez said.
“They didn’t know they were being violated in that manner. They just thought it was a game,” Marquez said.
The lieutenant said Berndt was placed under surveillance and it’s believed he had no contact with children during the investigation.
Berndt is unmarried, has no children and there’s no indication of a previous arrest record, authorities said.
“I am sickened and horrified by the behavior of Mark Berndt,” Los Angeles Unified School District Superintendent John Deasy said in a statement.
The teacher was immediately removed when the Sheriff’s Department informed the district, and he was fired, Deasy said.
More than 80 current and former students and school employees were interviewed for the investigation.
Searches of the classroom and Berndt’s home turned up about 390 photographs depicting children, and at least 10 youngsters in them have not yet been identified, Marquez said.
In addition, A DVD depicting adult sexual bondage activity “which mirrored the bondage-type photos of the children” was also found during the search, the department said, noting that the adults in that video were not identified and those images are not a crime.
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Comments (88)
3monkeysmomma
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 9:27pmThe worse part is he’ll be reading magazines in a rubber room for the next few years while collecting a paycheck most likely.
Report Post »jb.kibs
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 11:30pmdang, let the kids take pepper spray or stun guns to school…
Report Post »Trevorkian420
Posted on February 1, 2012 at 12:02amYeah no kidding good news is they caught him bad news is they can’t fire him
Report Post »TomFerrari
Posted on February 1, 2012 at 7:20amHow do these sick people get through the “hiring process?”
Report Post »Such great things keep coming from the LA school district.
Good thing we rewarded their success with a BILLION DOLLAR school building!!!
A teacher recently told me her interview where she now teaches, consisted of one question, “What is a lesson plan?” The question was/is ridiculously ‘elementary.’ She got the job, but, COME ON!!
That’s all our children deserve???
This freak is all our children deserve?
Seems we are hiring too many HIGHLY COMPENSATED babysitters who also teach, and not just EDUCATORS who understand their responsibility and their role in shaping our society.
The unions are forcing the debate to be about the “teachers” and not about the STUDENTS.
Until we rid ourselves of unions, at least they should have to negotiate PUBLICLY, with the PTA’s, instead of with a bureaucrat who is susceptible to laziness or even corruption or simply pro-union.
Who is representing our children? Who looks out for them?
Teachers work for US. We just hire principals and superintendents to administer FOR US.
We must get involved and STAY involved!
starchy
Posted on February 1, 2012 at 8:44amThey say in the story he was fired immediately – no rubber room for this sicko. He’ll get whats coming to him in prison.
Report Post »glassbeadlady
Posted on February 1, 2012 at 1:08pmHow sick our society has become.
Report Post »blackyb
Posted on February 4, 2012 at 12:23amYes, you have a valid point there. We better work longer and harder so he can have his special treats so his mind will not go blank. The schools out there would miss that ‘brillian’ mind of his. Those idiots had to have had some inklin of what was going on. I guess many of them had dirt on each other and couldn’t talk. They are a rotten bunch if they did.
Report Post »Melika
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 9:06pmSo we’re supposed to believe that none of these kids wanted to report this? Anyone want to bet that he told them if they said anything they would be deported? Keep coming in illegally, it’s great for you & your kids, morons.
Report Post »LeadNotFollow
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 8:45pm…
Report Post »Give him life, with nothing to eat but salty crackers and other prisoners’ semen to wash them down.
Unix
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 8:55pmJust another amoral liberal teacher, arent they just great people? This guy will have fun in jail when bubba gets ahold of him…may he rot in hell.
Report Post »rangerp
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 9:06pmget used to it. The more we accept homosexuality, the more child molestation we will see. this is a biproduct of accepting the degenerates and sexually devient. Homosexuals commit one third of the nations child molestations
Report Post »phillipwgirard
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 8:35pmWhat the he11?
Report Post »blackyb
Posted on February 4, 2012 at 12:29amHell, I guess you are a Mason? Why would I guess that? Aren’t you supposed to be a secrete? LOL
Report Post »1PORattler
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 8:22pmIf true… Then give him a.223 to the head and be done with him. I can tell you with todays criminal “justice” system I would certainly not leave the justice up to the system if it were my kids.
Want to see these crimes go off the same cliff as our economy, then start whacking these feral citizens.
Murder = Boom!!!
Rape = Boom!!!
Robbery = Boom!!!
Cowardly Gang Beatings = Boom.
Hell, I could solve this whole crime problem with nothing more than a pistol, a trackhoe and a 6 pack of beer.
Point being that if we start executing these types with impunity, these types of crimes will go the way of the current Baltic trade index.
Report Post »TXPilot
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 8:27pmI’m sure this teachers union is already preparing a vigorous defense for him.
Report Post »Larryjr
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 9:02pmI hear you 1Porattler however once in a while our justice system does work and someone who appeared guilty is proven innocent. With that said, if this guy is guilty of sexual abuse of children, I’ll volunteer to pull the trigger.
Report Post »Taquoshi
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 9:43pmTxPilot,
If the unions are preparing a defense, it’s gonna be real interesting because sexual preditors and others who have committed sexual crimes are not allowed within a specific number of feet of where children are, like, oh, let’s say….schools, churches, shopping malls, etc. So this guy will not be able to go anywhere where there are children. That basically means the union will be paying him to stay home or work in an office where there is absolutely NO chance of him being anywhere near a minor.
Report Post »RedDawn2012
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 10:41pmThis pig is one step away from being another Hannibal Lecter. I have a .25 Beretta loaded with Glasers that I’d be happy to empty into him.
Report Post »1PORattler
Posted on February 1, 2012 at 12:25amI hear you Txpilot. I hate the union leadership. All yellow bellied commies and marxists of the worst variety. Of course when they have approx 50+ openly communist members sitting in the House and Senate, that they can cry and whine to, that certainly does not help either. As for offing this bastard if he is guilty. I would not hesitate in the least
Larryjr. You are right. On occasion it works. If they would retract the federal $ that the states receive for incarcerating someone, it would work better. Not to mention taking the control of our prisons away from private security firms who lobby for more inmates…
Report Post »McNamara
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 8:20pmFiring squad. Start at his feet and work your way up.
Report Post »proedge67
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 8:37pmI say a slow entry into a meat grinder would do the trick.
Report Post »MissKitty33
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 8:05pmSomething is very wrong here. I find it hard to believe that there were not any children that came forward. What kind of children are we raising or what kind of parents do we have raising our children?
Another item that does not feel right is the fact he went after both sexes. Usually these perverts have a “type”. Also who was taken these photos? I think that there is much more going on here than meets the eye.
Report Post »the58thstate
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 8:19pmkids are being raised thinking this stuff is normal. they are being taught that anything sexual is fine and its nobodys business. the brain washing starts as soon as they tune in to the tv.
Report Post »Unix
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 9:38pmeh, say what, it doesnt feel right, what you making excuses for the little pervert already, flush that turd down the toilet. The first responder to your silliness is right.
Report Post »BlueStarMom
Posted on February 2, 2012 at 1:39amThe kind that don’t speak English, whose parents are in constant fear of being deported, thus easily blackmailed and exploited by anyone who will threaten to make that call. Who go home every night to a household where no one speaks English in a neighborhood where no one speaks English with a culture that reveres male authority figures. Who would believe them? 390 photos? This is what proponents of illegal immigration/amnesty call compassion.
Report Post »lambchop60
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 8:02pmthey shouldn’t even waste the tax payers money on a trial for someone like this guy, if they have proof he done this hang his butt
Report Post »Grady
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 8:36pmI know of a person who was wrongly charged of a sexual crime because the female in the relationship knew that he would get custody. He was charged with rape an hour after the papers were served to her for emergency custody. The rape kit was negative. The police did no investigation. It was assumed that he was guilty before proven innocent. Our Judicial system works fine. Let it work. I am not saying that this creep is innocent, I am saying that the Justice system needs to work. I will say that if found guilty, he needs the “Charlie Daniels” treatment. Tie him to a stump in the swamp and let the skeeters and alligators do the rest.
Report Post »ShyMan
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:56pmWow. Just when u thought this world couldn’t get sicker.
Report Post »roxy
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:54pmwhat’s the matter with people, we need some God in this country!
Report Post »Gumbercules
Posted on February 1, 2012 at 3:10amSo you are saying that everybody who believes in God, or goes to church is without sin? Remember “Tiller the Baby Killer”? He was attending church when a hero assasinated him. Just saying; God is great, but not the answer unless you believe in him.
Report Post »GLENNONALL
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:52pmSec. of Education Arne Duncan is a member of NAMBLA I wonder if this lunatic is also.
Report Post »lukerw
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:57pmThe Public Education System is Sick… and this is just another story: we need Home School Cooperatives!
Report Post »VigilantGuardShark
Posted on February 1, 2012 at 9:24amAnother fine Organisation is the American Psychiatrics Association, releasing a statement within the last year saying that ‘Humans are sexual creatures no matter the age’, and going on to claim that sex between a man or woman and an infant would be totally alright. If that is what passes for Mental Correctness in Society, then we are in a deeper hole than previously believed.,ie, Hell.
Report Post »robinakilt
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:50pmnasty freak!
Report Post »lel2007
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:44pmPerversion has been redefined as ‘alternate life style’. It’s only fair. Soon this alternative will be explained in public schools across the country, so the children will understand.
Report Post »garbagecanlogic
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:38pmJust cut off his pee pee and put him in jail with bubba.
The U.S. Out Of The U.N.
Report Post »The U.N. Out Of The U.S.
bullcrapbuster
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:34pmSatan is gaing control of the hearts and minds of an ever increasing number of people. This is so sad for those innocent little ones.
Report Post »Deicide
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:32pmThis piece of garbage should be locked in a cold dark room, and left to rot. No Food, no water, hose the place out a month later
Report Post »Rational Man
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:32pmKill him…….NOW!
Report Post »Dolfenn24
Posted on February 1, 2012 at 8:58amThank you for the most sensible post yet!
Report Post »btycrkr
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:32pmUnfortunately, he’d probably be put in solitary to protect the b*st*rd. Too bad no one protected these innocent children. Makes me SICK!
Report Post »momrules
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:21pmI wonder how many young lives this monster has ruined. Jail is too good for him but I would guess that the other prisoners will make life there a living hell.
Report Post »grandmaof5
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:32pmI have long time thought an appropriate punishment for pedaphiles would be to put them in Alcatraz and then get the meanest, hairyest, grossest male predators to roam freely. See how they like being the victims. Would make a good reality show, don’t you think?
Report Post »progressiveslayer
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:17pmSick bastard should be summarily executed,child molesters need the death penalty and it’s time we stopped treating them with kid gloves.
Report Post »RightUnite
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:16pmDoes this really surprise anyone?? I wonder when the union will step in to protect this pedophiles sorry *ss??
Report Post »thejackal
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:16pmA lot of these Democrat, liberals are perverts. That’s why they tend to gravitate to professions revoloving around children, like teaching. So many liberal democrats are child abusers, it’s frightening. I try to have Conservative teachers teach my kids, much less of a chance of abuse.
Report Post »let us prey
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 8:09pmThe jackal
Report Post »Hey man. Have not seen you in a while. Agreed, they do gravitate toward the least resistance. Sickening, and someone should end this creep.
Jenny Lind
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:14pmAnd the reason for allowing him to stay alive on this planet is?????
Report Post »cyclops
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:52pmNone whatsoever and a firing sguad should be called……
Report Post »blackyb
Posted on February 4, 2012 at 12:28amNo body wants to go to jail for knocking him off.
Report Post »ShamanWorld
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:11pmNo comment from the Blaze community(white) after 2 hours??? Denial maybe?
Report Post »RightUnite
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:20pmNot everyone lives on this site. Most normal people actually have a life. Wait until tomorrow when people get back on line…. You‘ll see this isn’t a black/white thing moron.
Report Post »Conkuur
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:20pmWTF does color have to do with perversion?! What did you think it only comes in one shade or religion?! Your question belies your own perversions and that makes you just as sick!
Report Post »RonmeyPaulBotsrOdd
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:46pmA true liberal idiot would bring race into this…anything to distract from what occurred. I was not going to comment as the article is perverse enough, but to read this what this A$$ Clown had to say is worthy of at least a note or two.
Report Post »Ever wonder where true racism is hidden – just look at the police departments. There are many poor and people of color that show up missing every day, but does it get the mainstream push that a young college white girl will gone missing will draw? Michelle Malkin has beautiful missing niece and not a peep from I think even this outlet. Yet, a racial perv like Shaman will throw out a comment instead of looking at reality.
If there is something to be said about race – at least question why The Blaze does not provide updates about the niece of a great conservative writer?
blackyb
Posted on February 4, 2012 at 12:34amIf you don’t like us, leave us and start your own racist blog. We owe you nothing. Keep crying race until no one listens. You are a bunch of whiners or dividers, most likely. Stick your nose back into your black azz or someone elses azz who will listen to your whinning, and there are plenty of white azzes who will too, so they will look ‘progressive.‘ We do not care what color you are we just do not like any color azz holes who have to use that ’race card’ thing over and over. Get it? If you don’t just shut the (whatever) up.
Report Post »koyettsu
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:11pmNow execute him and solve one of the many problems that we have with no chance of repeat offense.
Report Post »IMAWAKENOW
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:21pmcan I donate the bullet?
Report Post »Mateytwo Barreett
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:34pmAbandoned house, hammer, large headed nail, hammer, 5 gal. of kerosene, a match and a dull knife and a real bizarre imagination.
Report Post »momrules
Posted on January 31, 2012 at 7:59pm@Matey………Did you ever read a book called Dark Thirty? You pretty much described what happened to the villian in that story. He deserved it and so does this monster.
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