Channel 6 San Diego: Teen files lawsuit against CVESD teacher accused of sexual molestation

John Raymond Kinloch (Photo from Crime Voice.com)

CVESD wants to blame someone else for not warning them ahead of time about Kinloch. But what about all the years that Kinloch spent at CVESD? After a few years, it simply makes no sense for district officials to claim they had no idea what was going on--unless the district also admits that it actually has very little clue about what is going on in most classrooms. Teacher evaluations are a joke, but not a very funny joke.

The district has a policy of letting school politics guide personnel decisions. And the policy is hurting a lot of kids. It's time for administrators to start showing up in classrooms, and to start talking to ALL staff members. When it comes to what kind of people are running classrooms, the blissful ignorance of administrators needs to end.

See SDER teacher evaluation plan.

See also "California Teachers Association protects child molesting teacher."

See all posts about arrested CVESD teacher John Kinloch.

Exclusive: Teen files lawsuit against teacher accused of sexual molestation
By Derek Staahl
Channel 6 San Diego
08 Jan 2014

CHULA VISTA – A Chula Vista teenager who testified that he was sexually exploited by his former second grade teacher has filed a lawsuit against the man and the school district.

The boy, who is now 17, accuses John Raymond Kinloch of childhood sexual assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Kinloch is being held on 36 felony counts involving five alleged victims, according to Deputy District Attorney Enrique Camarena. The charges include lewd acts upon a child and possession of child pornography.

According to court documents, Kinloch taught the boy at Feaster Charter School and the two developed a close bond. The boy considered the 42-year-old San Ysidro man to be a father figure. The child was in third grade, but still regularly spending time with Kinloch, when the lewd acts began, Camarena said.

Kinloch is accused of improperly touching and kissing the boy, along with asking him to remove his clothes and taking pictures of him naked, according to court documents. Kinloch has pleaded not guilty to the charges and a trial is scheduled for April 1.

“Mr. Kinloch was in his classroom at school, disrobing this child with the door locked. That's negligent supervision in my mind,” Elaine Heine, the boy’s attorney, told San Diego 6.

The boy’s lawsuit, filed in August, also argues that the Chula Vista Elementary School District negligently hired Kinloch because he was a known distributor of child pornography.



In 1998, Kinloch agreed to testify in Great Britain about his involvement in a child pornography ring. In exchange for his testimony, the U.S. Attorney’s Office agreed to offer Kinloch immunity, and he was never charged, Camarena said. Kinloch was hired by the school district two years later.

Heine has filed claims against the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing on the boy’s behalf, and plans to add those agencies as defendants in her lawsuit. The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount of damages.

The Chula Vista Elementary School District has filed a lawsuit against the federal Department of Justice, trying to determine why Kinloch’s background check raised no red flags.

Are teachers wounding kids?

Are Schools Wounding Kids?
By Kathie Marshall
The Teacher Magazine
July 29, 2009

...Throughout the year, there was this constant tension between what I was supposed to be doing with students and what I was actually doing.

And what was I supposed to be doing? To me, hand-in-hand with the goal of improving reading was the equally important goal of providing my at-risk students with positive learning experiences. Many were already beaten down and convinced they were losers. Bringing some fun and win-win into the classroom equation would help them, however cautiously, to try once more. Was this not important, too?

Teacher-consultant Bill Page defines at-risk students as “Children who are expected to fail because teachers cannot motivate, control, teach, or interest them using traditional methods and prescribed curriculum.” ...

To shine a light on these issues, one day I had my kids sit in a large circle. One child at a time answered the question, “When did you turn off to school?” In my years as literacy coach, I met privately with intervention students who had the lowest grade point averages, and they always had an answer to this question. Most often they turned off in 3rd or 6th grade, when they realized they were struggling and others around them seemingly were not.

Interestingly, seven of my 7th graders this year had turned off to school in the 2nd grade, when they were part of a district experiment that retained the lowest performers. They still had not forgotten what it felt like to be left behind as their friends moved on...

‘Teachers’ Little Comments’

Recently, I came across Kirsten Olson’s new book, Wounded by School. I immediately devoured it and found more insights into the world of at-risk students.

Olson explains that her book began “with a desire to understand the experiences of highly capable learners, virtuoso explorers who showed unusual vitality in learning.” But she was “quickly diverted by the repeated and powerful descriptions among my research subjects of educational wounding and laceration in school.”

As I read this, I immediately saw an image of myself as a 6th grader. I was walking back to class after recess, and for perhaps the fifth day in a row I asked my teacher, “Can I go to the nurse? I have a headache.” “What’s wrong with you?” shouted Mr. Wright. “Why do you always have a headache?!” It was another 15 years before my migraines were diagnosed. I warily hid my headaches from others after my teacher taught me to believe something was wrong with me as a person.

Wounded by School delineates a dozen different types of school wounding and their effects, including:

• Feeling you aren’t smart and your ideas lack value.
• Feeling you don’t have what it takes to be successful in school.
• Feeling ashamed of your efforts.
• Suffering a loss of ambition, self-discipline, and persistence when faced with obstacles.

In a section called “wounds of rebellion,” I found my intervention kids and their defensive symptoms:

• The only way to protect yourself is to rebel.
• In response to being unsuccessful or told we are unworthy, we become hostile.
• We are unwilling to see another point of view.
• We act out, as an adaptive response and it becomes fixed, maladaptive, and self-destructive.

Olson quotes one student, who remembers a crushing moment in 7th grade that led him to declare, “I quit! I just really quit!”

The student saw himself as a screw-up: “Basically I became motivated to not do well—like what I could do well was not to do well. ... Kids that struggle are so much more sensitive to moments—especially bad ones. These moments shape their whole lives, their sense of themselves. Teachers’ little comments had a huge effect on me.”

...In an essay about three strengths of his, one of my students wrote: “I am good at three things. I can draw (graffiti), I like to be bad, and I get in trouble a lot.”

Olson’s book is not directed only at struggling students. Her research clearly shows that all students are vulnerable to school wounds...“Rather than making them more dutiful, more competent, and more disciplined, they grew weary of school and learning … risk averse, overly intimidated by authority, or likely to underestimate themselves … simply deadened—less enlivened by the world and its possibilities than they might be.”


See Also
Help Wanted: Leader to Promote a Culture of Learning
By Kirsten Olson