A former fifth-grade teacher at an El Segundo elementary school who was indicted in 2013 was acquitted today of nearly a dozen felony charges alleging that he committed lewd acts on six boys.
The Los Angeles Superior Court jury that heard the case against Jeffrey Simonek, 30, deliberated about two days before acquitting him of 11 counts of lewd acts upon a child under 14, according to defense attorney Steffeny Holtz.
“I think it’s a shame that Mr. Simonek was presumed guilty from the beginning … It’s a shame he lost two years of his life,” Holtz said of her client, who was expected to be released later today after being jailed for nearly two years in lieu of $20 million bail. “It’s a witch hunt, a classic witch hunt … a modern-day crucible.”
She said her client is “innocent.”
Jane Robison of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office said, “While we disagree with the outcome, we respect the jury process.”
A grand jury indictment in November 2013 charged Simonek — who taught fifth grade for a year at Center Street School in El Segundo — with 20 counts of lewd acts upon a child and alleged that the crimes occurred between April 2006 and June 2012.
One of the charges was dismissed before the case went to trial, and eight other charges were dismissed before the case was sent to the jury.
In her opening statement, Deputy District Attorney Simone Shay told the jury, “This is not about the defendant being homosexual … This case is about the defendant’s repeated violation of young boys.”
The prosecutor alleged that Simonek, while working as a “pal” at a camp for children with chronic disabilities, traveled to Disneyland with one family and touched a boy between his legs while sitting directly behind him on the Big Thunder Mountain ride.
The boy’s mother was “unnerved and upset,” but wasn’t entirely sure what she had seen, according to the prosecutor.
The family went to Disneyland with Simonek again the next year and when the mother saw Simonek with his hand up her son’s shirt, rubbing his chest and whispering to him in a line for a ride, she grabbed the boy and vowed never to let him alone with the camp counselor, Shay told jurors.
At a camp in the Lake Tahoe area, where one camper had contracted Lyme disease, Simonek allegedly looked down the boys’ shorts during a check for ticks and one boy claimed that Simonek reached inside his pants and touched him.
As a new teacher’s aide at Center Street School, Simonek was told not to hug the children and not to be alone with them, the prosecutor told jurors.
He was “given a very specific lecture” about “all this physical contact” during recess, Shay said.
But at least four fifth-grade boys in a class Simonek taught several years later said “he would massage their shoulders, he would rub their heads and they were uncomfortable,” Shay told jurors.
“Many of the touchings are what we would consider very minor,” the prosecutor acknowledged, but she told jurors they were “done with sexual intent.”
Simonek’s attorney countered that her client was the target of a conservative community, classroom troublemakers and a clique of teachers.
“It never happened,” Holtz said repeatedly during her opening statement.
“Ever since McMartin, we know how something like this can happen,” she told jurors, referring to the 1980s-era trial of a family that operated the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, in which students told stories of sexual abuse and bizarre Satanic rituals. Those defendants were ultimately acquitted.
The defense attorney said jurors would hear from at least 10 children, including one boy with perfect attendance, that they never saw Simonek do anything inappropriate.
His classroom had 30 children and three full-time adult aides in a 30- foot-by-31-foot space, Holtz told the jury panel.
“What you’re never going to hear is that Mr. Simonek was alone with a child,” she said.
Simonek’s troubles began after he went to a party in El Segundo and told a mom he didn’t like the attitude of one boy he considered a troublemaker, Holtz told jurors.
“They’re very, very conservative … they don’t tend to like outsiders,” Holtz said of the community, where the news spread quickly and the boy’s parents called the school the next day to complain.
“The other teachers, some of them did not like Mr. Simonek,” Holtz said. “He wasn’t quite part of their group.”
Gender bias and sexual orientation bias led to complaints about Simonek coming to children’s sports games, even though other teachers routinely attended, according to the defense attorney.
