*Update: It appears young Aaron Westbrook (a teacher arrested Monday for allegedly sleeping with one of his students at Capo Valley High; see below) graduated from Vanguard University, the Christian higher learning post in Costa Mesa where his dad, Ed Westbrook, is a professor of business, is head of the business department and is involved with a whole bunch of Christian teen and children's charities. Dad even served as a judge pro tem in south County for more than ten years. Ouch.
What it is it about this sun-loving county that brings out the sex kitten in some of our teachers, provoking them to do unmentionable things with their underage students? Sure, the majority of the hundreds of teachers who teach in the county are law-abiding workaholics with stellar student-teacher reputations, but six teachers were arrested in the last three months for crossing the Lolita line. That seems like a lot for one county. Or at least like some sort of record.
L.A. didn't even stack up (they had two school sex- scandal related incidents in the past three months). Seems we may now have enough teachers for another hit reality t.v. show.
The sixth teacher to be arrested for allegedly knocking it with a
student was Aaron Westbrook, a 25-year-old social sciences teacher at Capistrano
Valley High who also helped coach the girls beach volleyball and surf teams. He was arrested yesterday on campus and posted bail today.
September launched the teacher fetish showdown with the arrests of George Harcourt Bull,
the substitute teacher and soccer coach from Lake Forest who was
engaging in naughty web cam sessions with a 13-year-old boy and was caught
with child porn on his computer; and of Thomas Cole, the Aliso Niguel
High basketball coach charged with having sex with a student (and who
was just arrested again today for sending text messages to that same student).
]
October ushered in the arrests of Christopher Brazelton, a first grade teacher in Garden Grove who grabbed a twelve- year-old girl's butt at Wal-Mart; and Carlie Attebury,
the music teacher at El Modena High in Orange arrested and charged with
sleeping with one of her students. We met number five last week when
Gustavo Arellano broke the news of Alonso Gonzalez's
arrest on our blog. The teacher's aid at Saddleback High in Santa Ana
was arrested for not being able to keep his hands off of his special ed
charges. Worse, it
seems officials at Santa Ana Unified turned a blind eye when parents
complained.
It remains to be seen if the same was the case down south with Aaron
Westbrook, although according to early reports, the school principal
initiated an investigation Monday after she received an email from a
parent last Wednesday.
This is a legacy county, after all. If
you remember, the teacher at the center of the mother of all teacher-student sex scandals was Mary Kay Letourneau, the OC born and bred daughter of ex-ultra conservative OC lawmaker John G. Schmitz ,
a Santa Ana College professor who fathered two children with one of his
own students behind his family's back. Mary Kay was the Seattle teacher
who not once, but twice, was impregnated by her 13-year-old student,
whom she says she fell desperately in love with. She delivered her
babies in jail, served her time, got a divorce and married the teen (now all grown up!) who fathered her children all those years ago.
