Parents Organize to Trace Complaints Marking Short Career

By Patric Hedlund and Gary Meyer

Charges of criminal sexual conduct with a minor in New Mexico have been dropped against newly-hired Frazier Mountain High School teacher David Allan Deshler, 44.

Prosecutor Barbara Romo withdrew the charges on Thursday, Aug. 28, after The Mountain Enterprise had gone to press last week with a report about the indictment. In a contradictory event, Deshler’s California teaching credential was again suspended on August 29 by the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CTC).

Deshler said in interviews he has 10 days in which to prove to the CTC that the New Mexico charges have been dropped. He says his credential will then be restored.

In the past 10 days The Mountain Enterprise conducted an investigation, encompassing 200 pages of legal filings, public records reviews in three states, formal records requests in two states and hours of interviews with over 20 officials, witnesses and Deshler himself. Meanwhile, local parents have continued inquiries into legal databases. Our lines of inquiry converge to show that Deshler, certified to teach for less than eight years, has a history of disputes in at least five past schools focused on allegations of inappropriate conduct with children.

Deshler confirmed three of these disputes, providing transcripts and legal complaints mentioning words such as ‘inappropriate touching.’

Deshler said several times that he is being discriminated against as a single male and that “women teachers lie, parents lie, children lie” about him.

In a federal civil rights suit he filed July 29, 2004 against Piñon Unified School District on the Navajo Reservation in Arizona, he alleged discrimination because of his race and gender. In it, he acknowledges that allegations of inappropriate behavior were made when he worked as a substitute at the Konocti Unified School District (60 miles north of Napa), Jefferson Elementary in Anaheim and the Placentia-Yorba Linda District. Other schools where he has had related problems include Santa Rita (near Salinas), the Piñon school in Arizona and the Española school in New Mexico where the grand jury indicted him on the recently dropped charges.

On Saturday, Aug. 30 The Mountain Enterprise interviewed Deshler to review the timeline of his employment at FMHS. We held a follow-up interview on September 1. He has appeared eager to talk, and feels events have treated him unfairly.

He said that he reported to the Kern County Superintendent of School’s office for a “live scan”—a computerized imprint of his fingerprints that is transmitted to the Department of Justice—before he went to the employment interview with FMHS Principal Dan Penner. “I passed the live scan background check,” he said.

On Friday, Aug. 15, Deshler was hired to teach 10th grade science at Frazier Mountain High School, just before the new school year was to begin.

He has not taught science before, and his previous teaching jobs were with first and third grade elementary school students.

He has a master’s degree in education, and a ‘science supplement,’ but no credential to teach at the high school level.

Deshler explains that he was “hired on a waiver to give me time to take classes” to secure an appropriate credential.

Deshler says his plan was to live with his parents in Pine Mountain, “to help them with the rent.” The day after being hired, Saturday, Aug. 16, he went to the swimming pool in Pine Mountain. While at the pool he played water volleyball with children and pushed two boys on a “floatie raft.” When he came out of the water he snapped a photo of the pool, he says. Parents say a lifeguard alerted them that “something isn’t right.” The parents say they believed he was taking photos of children and tensions rose. Security and a sheriff were called.

A Ventura County middle school teacher at the pool that day said she “knows all about virtual child pornography on the web,” and asked Deshler to stop taking photos of children.

Deshler said Manager Jerry Fossler looked at the camera and confirmed there were no photos of children on it. Kern County Sheriff’s Sgt. Bryan Armendariz of the Frazier Park substation said his deputy examined the camera and found no photos of children. Deshler is not listed on the Megan’s Law database of sexual offenders and he has no outstanding warrants, Armendariz reports.

Parent Alan Youngman, who was at the pool and is the father of one of the children on the raft, said in two interviews, “if he was not taking pictures he was trying to provoke by pretending he was taking photos, because it really looked like that was what he was doing.

“I have 12 years in…military security and I could tell something was wrong. I thought at first that he was the father of one of the other boys. He could have just waved and walked off with our kids and this could have been another kind of story….”

Deshler left the pool and went to the afternoon concert. “That was my plan for the day and if I didn’t go, I would have looked guilty,” Deshler said in an interview.

His presence at the concert incensed parents who had been uncomfortable at the pool. Some say he “moved his chair to look directly at the grass area where the children were playing,” and resumed taking photos. Deshler said he rotated his chair slightly at intermission to avoid the sun in his eyes. He admits taking a photo of a woman who was taking a picture of him, “to show her hypocrisy,” he said, “she has a camera in the presence of children, but just because I’m a single male, if I have a camera I must be suspect.”

Deshler reported to work at FMHS on Monday, Aug. 18 and students returned to school on Wednesday, Aug. 20. He taught two days.

Pine Mountain parents, as reported earlier, had noticed his New Mexico license and did internet searches which yielded the indictment in New Mexico and the fact that his teaching credential had been suspended for 120 days by CTC. The Mountain Enterprise confirmed those searches, but also learned of the California teaching credential being reinstated by CTC on August 8.

Deshler said that on Friday, Aug. 22 Penner called him into his office at 8 a.m. and presented him with the document from the New Mexico Supreme Court internet site regarding the indictment. “[Penner] reassigned me to home, pending an investigation,” the teacher said. He refused to divulge whether he had previously informed Penner of his legal problems, saying it was a condition of his reassignment that he not discuss the matter

“Reassigned to home” is a status used by administrators to get a teacher out of the classroom without giving them the right to a hearing, which they would have if they were suspended, Deshler said. He has been reassigned-to-home in three of his last four jobs.

Troubled History

Deshler taught first grade in Salinas, California, third grade on the Navajo reservation in Piñon, Arizona and third grade in Espanola, New Mexico.

He said he was not rehired after two years in Salinas because a letter mentioning sexual harassment had been placed in his file without his knowledge by a woman teacher following dinner with colleagues and their children at an Appleby’s restaurant. “One girl, her daughter, was friendly,” he relates. He said his students achieved above grade level and that he is proud of that. He said he believes women teachers are often jealous of his success with students and that he seeks to be a good role model to children from fatherless homes.

Moving to Arizona, Deshler encountered rough conditions on the Navajo reservation. He is proud of his work with students but in February 2004 was reassigned to home by the Piñon principal: “I am the third male white teacher reassigned to home in a year by the Navajo principal, who wants an all-Navajo school,” he said in the Aug. 30 interview, claiming discrimination. Deshler’s attorney acknowledges in a Mar. 24, 2004 letter to Pinon Unified School District that Deshler was placed on administrative leave “apparently on the basis of a complaint from the grand parent of one of his students.”

Deshler said that in June of 2004, “for closure at the end of the school year” he returned to the school to tell his students good-bye and to give them small presents. As he was leaving the school grounds, the principal called Navajo Nation police, saying he was trespassing. Two days later a Navajo County sheriff came to his house and arrested him. Deshler told The Mountain Enterprise that “the principal lied: she told the sheriff I had inappropriately touched a student,” in order to get the sheriff “to take me in shackles 100 miles to the jail, where they strip-searched me…for a charge of trespassing!”

His conviction in the Kayenta Justice Court was appealed in the Superior Court of Navajo County and ended Guilty on one count of trespassing in the second degree.

The discrimination lawsuit filed by Deshler against the district includes his acknowledgement that:

• “Prior to being employed by Defendant [Piñon school], Plaintiff [David Deshler] was employed by a school district in California, the Konocti school district. In October 2002, in response to ‘some complaints,’ Konocti informed Plaintiff they intended to dismiss him after a hearing. Plaintiff resigned his position and the hearing was never conducted.”
• “Prior to being employed by the Konocti district, Plaintiff [David Deshler] was employed by another school district in California, the Santa Rita district, where he was the subject of a ‘lengthy investigation’ into a complaint that he had sexually harassed a student. The Santa Rita district informed Plaintiff he would not be rehired because of parent and student complaints
• “In June 2003, after Plaintiff’s teaching contract with Defendant was renewed for the following full school year, the school district administration received a report that Plaintiff had engaged in inappropriate conduct with students, i.e., inappropriately hugging students and having students take candy from his pants pocket. The district superintendent met with Plaintiff and warned him about his conduct and warned him future complaints could result in termination of his employment.”

Indictment

Deshler lost his discrimination suit and went on to be hired in New Mexico at Española school teaching third grade. He obtained his masters degree and bought a house, planning to work his way up to be a school principal. He says he has an administrators credential for North Dakota and North and South Carolina.

Deshler said that in applying for his administrator’s credential in California, he answered all questions truthfully and factually, including mention of the sexual harassment allegation in Salinas. He said his problems in New Mexico began when that information was forwarded to his employer.

A girl accused him of touching “her butt and her chest,” he said. “It is like the 1950s all over again, except instead of communism, it is child molestation hysteria.” A grand jury indicted him on the basis of a DVD of the child’s testimony.

The prosecutor dismissed the suit, according to Deshler’s attorney, “because she could not prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the charges were true.”

Local Parents’ Concern

A statement sent to The Mountain Enterprise from a local parent summarizes the concerns of many: “while I understand that a person is innocent until proven guilty, I cannot understand that a truly horrible tragedy must occur before this person’s history is enough to prohibit him from teaching and photographing our children in the pool and parks. Our entire community feels unsafe. We are held prisoner by a documented but unprosecuted predator— afraid to allow our young teens to go to the recreation room or for our children to play in the park or pool…It is fair to say that—given this history—nobody really knows what he is truly capable of or where he will stop. And the most frightening thing is that he—and how many others—are not on the sex offenders registry because they have never been made to stand trial for their offenses but have instead committed their crimes within the jurisdiction of the school system of various states or have been clever enough to circumvent the legal system….”

For the Record

A misunderstanding about the name of the local firefighter who was personally involved in an encounter with David Deshler was printed last week. It was Kevin Waites, not Scott Robinson who asked Deshler August 16 not to photograph children. Robinson and his wife were involved in searching public records mentioning Deshler.

This is part of the September 05, 2008 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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