As reported by CNN and many other news outlets, a teacher that was dismissed approximately one year ago by the Los Angeles Unified School District’s school board, has been arrested and is now held on a $23 million bail, a figure that represents 23 separate counts of lewd acts on a child.
Mark Berndt, 61, allegedly bound his students, placed three-inch long live cockroaches on their faces and then held spoons up to their mouths – the spoons were later found to be holding semen.
He then photographed the children – taking over 600 images in his Miramonte Elementary School classroom. The photographs are now in the possession of authorities.
Berndt was arrested on January 30 and the bail amount, $23 million, was set two days later. He pleaded not guilty on February 21.
According to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office, Berndt’s victims were between the ages of 7 and 10, 21 were boys and two were girls.
Sergeant Dan Scott, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department spokesman, said that another 200 photographs were purportedly discovered and that the investigation is continuing.
A statement from the Los Angeles County sheriff’s read that “over 40 photographs depicting children in a school classroom, with their eyes blindfolded and mouths covered with tape” prompted their investigation.
The sheriff’s department stated, “Investigators learned that some of the photos depicted suspect Mark Berndt with his arm around the children, or with his hand over their mouths” and that photographs also showed “children with large live Madagascar-type cockroaches on their faces and mouths…(and) what appeared to be a blue plastic spoon, filled with an unknown clear/white liquid substance, up to their mouths as if they were going to ingest the substance.”
Lab testing – matching Berndt’s DNA to that in the liquid substance – led to his arrest. The substance later proved to be semen.
Scott added that the children “didn't realize they were victimized” and “they thought they were being blindfolded and gagged as a game. And they were rewarded with cookies or spoons full of sugar, (but) they did not realize the spoon contained semen.”
Photos found in Berndt’s home showed hundreds of images of children in sexual “bondage” activities per investigators.
Berndt was removed from the school by the board when they had learned that the police were investigating him. Berndt had been employed as a teacher for 30 years.
Miramonte Elementary is now at the center of several angry parents and their pending lawsuits. After closing for two days, the school reopened with an entirely new staff.
One parent, B.G., who had two children in Berndt’s classroom, told reporters, “He wasn't only a teacher he was our personal friend. He tricked us. We thought he was the best person in the world.”
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