Teacher arrested for molesting children in school



imageMark Berndt, 61, arrested on suspicion of committing lewd acts upon a child, faces 23 criminal counts involving children aged 7 to 10 years old.

Parents of Miramonte Elementary students are feeling shock, disgust and outrage after learning a teacher molested hundreds of small children in the classroom…. and they found out about it in the news.

“It makes me sick to my stomach to know what that teacher did to those children. They should castrate him,” says Rosa Ochoa, the mother of two small children currently attending the school. “You send your children to school with the expectation they’re going to be safe and then you learn something like this. How could this happen?”

Ochoa is horrified that innocent and vulnerable children have been exposed to what she calls a “degenerate pervert.”

61-year old Mark Berndt was arrested at his Torrence home on Monday morning and booked on suspicion of committing lewd acts upon a child. He’s facing 23 criminal counts involving children aged 7 to 10 years old. In those cases, the abuse took place between 2008 to 2010. Berndt is currently held on $2.3 million bail.

imageAccording to Sgt. Dan Scott of the sheriff’s Special Victims Bureau, Berndt had been a teacher at Miramonte Elementary School, located at 1400 E. 68th St. for more than 30 years.

The investigation began over a year ago when a film processor contacted the authorities and turned over photographs showing suspected child abuse. In the photos, children were in a school classroom with their eyes blindfolded and their mouths covered with tape. Some images showed children with large live cockroaches on their faces and mouths and girls being force-fed a liquid substance, identified as being semen.

“That teacher traumatized those children,” complains Alicia Salcedo. Her 8 year-old son, who attends Miramonte, was quick to share how the teacher covered the students with roaches. Wide-eyed, he spoke in an accelerated manner while motioning over his body as if he himself had roaches climbing over his small chest. But how did he know what happened? Was he a witness? No. “A friend told me,” he said. Was that friend in Berndt’s class? No. That means news spread quickly on the elementary school campus, frightening many children.

imageThis is the notice parents received on Tuesday, January 31, the day after teacher Mark Berndt was arrested.

Parents are also fuming over the fact the school fired the teacher in March of 2011, shortly after the investigation into Berndt was started, but that they only received a written notice the day after his arrest.

“They waited too long to tell us,” complains Salcedo. “I’ve come to many parent meetings at the school and they never told me about this.”

Sgt. Scott says more than 80 current and former students, as well as school employees were interviewed during the investigation. Hundreds of additional photos were found in Berndt’s home and at the film-processing business.

Investigators have identified more than 26 children in 390 photos, but about 10 of them have not been identified.

If anyone knows the identity of other possible victims while Berndt was teaching at the school, they’re urged to call the sheriff’s Special Victims Bureau at (877) 710-LASD; or Crime Stoppers, (800) 222-TIPS.

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