ROONEY GOES TO PRISON: Ex-LAUSD administrator pleads out in molestation case

By Daily News wire services

08/27/2009 11:55:05 AM PDT - A former Los Angeles school administrator pleaded no contest today to felony unlawful sex and lewd act counts involving four teenage girls from two schools where he worked.

<PHOTO: LAPD

Steve Thomas Rooney, 40, entered his plea to three counts of lewd acts with a child and one count of unlawful sexual intercourse.

He was was taken into custody without bail after the hearing. He is expected to receive an eight-year prison term when he is sentenced Sept. 15.

Rooney is also expected to be ordered to submit to AIDS testing and to register as a sex offender for life, officials said.

The charges involved two girls he met at Foshay Learning Center in South Los Angeles, where Rooney initially worked as a teacher and later became the dean of students; and two other girls he met at Markham Middle School, where he worked as an assistant principal.

Rooney was initially charged with 13 felony counts involving three teenage girls, including a former Foshay Learning Center student who testified at a May 2008 hearing that she began dating him in 2005, when she was 15, and had a relationship with him that lasted about 1 1/2 years and included a pregnancy that ended with a miscarriage.

At the hearing in which Rooney was ordered to stand trial, the other two girls testified that they met Rooney while he was working as an assistant principal at Markham Middle School in early 2008.

One of the girls, who was 13, testified that Rooney repeatedly told her that he loved her, took her on a motorcycle to his apartment and ignored her protests that she didn't want to have sex.

The other girl, a 15-year-old, testified that Rooney had grabbed her buttocks in his office on one occasion and her breasts on another occasion, and kissed her breasts in another instance.

In June, Rooney was ordered to stand trial on five more felony counts involving a fourth teenage girl, who is now 19.

The girl testified that she and Rooney kissed twice at Foshay Learning Center - including once in an office that didn't belong to Rooney - and that he picked her up by her house on one occasion and they went to a park where they "started making out."

She said "everything was consensual," and that she wasn't sure how old she was at the time, although the criminal complaint alleged the conduct occurred between June 2004 and June 2006, beginning when she was 14 years old. She said the two didn't have sex.

The girl acknowledged that she initially told a police investigator that nothing happened, and that she only spoke up after being contacted by an attorney. But she said she did not want to be a plaintiff in any lawsuit against the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Darkness to Light: CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE PREVENTION TRAINING FOR PARENTS

Dear Parents and School Community members:

We have heard way too much about child abuse at LAUSD recently – We have heard about violations and we have heard about policy.

There can be only one policy: Zero Tolerance. Child Sexual Abuse can be and must be Prevented!

We cannot afford to be complacent. This is unsettling material; this is powerful and empowering stuff.

If you only go to one District sponsored training this year this one should be the one!

Onward! – smf

Be Prepared – More Info

You can download Darkness to Light's 7 Steps to Protecting our Children by right-clicking on the 7 STEPS link above and choosing "Save Target As". You will need the free software Adobe Acrobat to view the file.

Los Angeles Unified School District

Parent Community Services Branch

Registration Form

Parents and Community

The Parent Community Services Branch, is pleased to present:

The Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Training

The Parent Collaborative will sponsor the Child Sexual Abuse Prevention Training. The training is an effort to raise parent awareness of child sexual abuse and its prevention, as well as provide information to parents and the community.

Date: Saturday, November 22, 2008

Time: 8:30 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Location: Edward R. Roybal Learning Center [map]

1200 W. Colton Street

Los Angeles, CA 90026

Important: Adults only! Sorry, no children.

Send via school mail or fax to:

Parent Community Services Branch

(213) 626-4644

SEATS ARE LIMITED TO THE FIRST 400 PARTICIPANTS

Continental breakfast, lunch, and translation will be provided. Parking will be validated.

This is your confirmation. Please call (213) 217-5272 if you cannot attend.

_______________________________________________

No children! Please return your registration form early.

The registration deadline is Monday, November 17, 2008

Local District _____ School: _________________________________________

Name: _______________________________________________________________________

Address: _____________________________________________________________________

City/Zip: ___________________________________

Telephone: _______________________

Approved: Christopher Downing, Administrator

Rooney Redux: “WHAT PART OF ‘UNLAWFUL SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP WITH A MINOR’ IS IT THAT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND?”

opinion by smf | 4lakids

In the PILLSBURY REPORT LAUSD’s hired gun/outside counsel $209,000. investigation of the Rooney Matter – blame is assigned to Dan Issacs, then the District’s former Chief Operating Officer for the memo he sent out following Rooney’s initial arrest.

The report finds that Isaacs did not make clear the allegation that Rooney was a suspected child molester.

 

Here’s the memo:

 

The ‘smoking gun’ part of the Isaacs Memo says:  “Mr. Rooney was arrested on charges of assault with a deadly weapon in an incident that occurred on January 1, 2007. LAPD is also investigating allegations that he had an unlawful sexual relationship with a minor.”

Any and everyone on the distribution of the memo who read those words and didn’t immediately understand the allegations wasn’t paying attention.

LAUSD is governed by memos and bulletins;  informatives, resolutions and policy.

The skill set required of a leader in such an environment is separating the important from the trivial; failure is defined in the inability to do so.  The EdSpeak word for this is “Decoding”.  We expect it of the beginners and we must expect it of the experts.

As memos go, that one was as clear as they come.

The Pillsbury report faults Isaacs in that he did not spell out that the person Rooney allegedly assaulted with a deadly weapon was the stepfather of the girl he was suspected of having an unlawful sexual relationship with.

• Please… Mr Rooney was (and continues to be) an alleged perpetrator, innocent until proven guilty. He continued to be a District employee, albeit one under suspicion of two very serious offences.
• The alleged assault-with-a-deadly-weapon victim and the alleged sexual abuse victim – a minor – are entitled to a certain amount of privacy; the young girl an extraordinary amount of it.

Mr Issacs is also faulted because he did not circulate this memo to the Employee Relations Office and the Staff Relations Office (two silos in the Beaudry bureaucracy) — although it was circulated in a timely manner to those two offices by others on the circulation list.

 

We must stop the blame game and the witch hunt because there is plenty of blame  to go around …and no witches!  There is however darkness and evil. There is black and white and infinite shades of grey.

And though the word has descended into overuse and discredit — there are evildoers preying on children.  —smf

 

THE PILLSBURY REPORT on the LA Times Website, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request.  Also known as The Markham Middle School Report or Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman final report re: The Markham Investigation, dated June 2, 2008  -- plus Board Resolutions and Policy bulletins.