Lawyers for famous L.A. teacher say allegations against him are ‘baseless’
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Version 0 of 1. The release of documents alleging that internationally known fifth-grade teacher Rafe Esquith made sexual references to students and spanked some of them has drawn a sharp response from Esquith’s lawyers in one of the most inflammatory teacher dismissal cases ever. “The release of discredited and baseless allegations with no validation in law or any court, and the piecemeal out-of-context release of an email from a graduate of years ago, reflects the depths of retaliation and retribution from” the Los Angeles Unified School District, attorneys Mark Geragos and Ben Meiselas said in a statement. They said they were particularly troubled by the release of emails, apparently recovered from Esquith’s school computer, in response to a freedom of information request from the Los Angeles Times. “Mr. Esquith has never used an LAUSD email account,” the attorneys said. “This means that LAUSD would have had to hack into Mr. Esquith’s personal AOL account, without a warrant or notice, and harvested thousands of emails for over a decade since the account was set up.” David Holmquist, general counsel for the Los Angeles public schools, told me: “We didn’t write these emails, Mr. Esquith did. And we didn’t do any hacking. We got all of this information from his District computer.” Esquith’s attorneys have attacked the Los Angeles district’s dismissal of its best-known teacher, the author of four books and widely admired by other educators, as part of a witch hunt that pulled hundreds of other teachers out of their classrooms. The attorneys share my view that the district went overboard to punish even off-color humor because its board was traumatized by heavily publicized cases of L.A. teachers molesting children. [Even with details of allegations against L.A. teacher, it’s still a witch hunt] Esquith, 61, has been charged with no crime and still has his pension. He is likely to publish more books and find other teaching opportunities, but his effort to discredit the charges against him will take years in court. His attorneys have sued the district both on his behalf and on behalf of thousands of teachers they say have been unfairly targeted by a tough new investigative unit created after the molestation scandals. Meiselas showed me a copy of a script he acquired in his investigation which prompts officials removing teachers from their jobs. It has the official tell the teacher to present any new information that might affect the final decision. It tells the official to “let the employee or representative speak” and then tell the person “I have considered the information presented” but the removal will go forward anyway. “LAUSD illegally accessed attorney-client documents and marital documents, and crafted an illegal and criminal strategy to smear Mr. Esquith by purporting to selectively quote an email from years ago from the hundreds of thousands of emails that would have been processed,” the attorneys said in their statement. Emails said to be from Esquith have him telling one student “you are a Goddess” and another that she was “dazzling” and “sexy.” Esquith has denied all of the district’s charges. No Los Angeles school district student or parent “has ever made any allegation against Mr. Esquith,” his attorneys said. “In fact, LAUSD’s hit squad invaded the homes and colleges of these students demanding that they say something negative about Mr. Esquith and threatening to return if they did not. The students had nothing negative to say.” The attorneys’ statement noted that the district is obliged to report teacher misconduct to the California Teacher Credentialing Commission, but did not refer the emails, a charge that Esquith molested a child when he was 19 or other allegations in the released documents to the commission before it closed the Esquith case in May. It did report a joke Esquith told to students about the possibility they might have to perform their next Shakespeare play in the nude, but the commission said the incident did not show misconduct. The attorneys said Esquith was subjected to numerous and rigorous background checks before receiving the National Medal of Arts from President George W. Bush, before being made a Member of the British Empire and before receiving teacher of the year awards from the Walt Disney Co. and Oprah Winfrey. In their criticism of the school district, including this latest statement, Esquith’s lawyers have hit the school board for coming after teachers for alleged misbehavior while at the same time settling, for at least $350,000, a sexual harassment suit filed against superintendent Ramon Cortines by a senior employee in the district’s facilities division, Scot Graham. Cortines, 79, said in a statement when the settlement was announced that he had not harassed Graham but had engaged in “adult behavior on one occasion.” “LAUSD has established a dangerous precedent for all teachers,” the Esquith attorneys said. “Without any case or formal charges pending against them in any form, LAUSD will hack into your private email accounts, harass and assault former students, and rush to turn over illegally seized and fabricated information to the press.” That carelessness with teachers’ reputations, very different from what happens in most school districts, is likely to taint the reputation of the nation’s second-largest district for a long time. |