Gilroy High School teacher Douglas Le now stands accused of two felony counts of child enticement for his online activity targeting minors. While local families and students are shocked, the Gilroy Unified School District superintendent has admitted that this is not the first time Le has been accused of inappropriate behavior.
As KSBW reports, Le, 25 stands accused deceiving minors online and convincing them to send sexually explicit photographs of themselves to him. According to the San Jose Police Department’s Internet Crimes Against Children task force, Le created a Facebook account posing as a young girl and carried on online relationships with a number of different boys, some of them Gilroy High students. The police believe that Le contacted up to 500 minors under his fake account.
Le is in the process of being fired from his position at Gilroy High School and many current and former students have expressed shock over the allegations. “He’s my teacher. I still cannot believe he could be capable of this,” one student wrote on Facebook. “I can only pray that these allegations are false. He was a brilliant teacher.”
The school board held a meeting addressing the charges against the teacher, which included a statement from one of the student’s parents, KRON reported.
Prior Accusations
After news broke that Le had been arrested, KSBW was contacted by a local mother who, not two years ago, brought to the school’s attention that Le had been exchanging sexually explicit texts with her daughter, also a Gilroy High student. “I brought them proof. Did they take appropriate action? No,” said the mother. “Could this have been prevented? You bet. More should (and) could have been done.”
Superintendent Deborah Flores admits that there was a texting incident in 2014 involving Le, but that the matter was investigated and Le was disciplined before returning to the classroom. “This was about several inappropriate texts. There was no evidence whatsoever of what we are now hearing from the San Jose Police Department about enticing minors through a fake persona, asking students to send nude pictures,” Flores told reporters.
Unfortunately, the circumstances surrounding this incident appear to be all-too-common. If a teacher or another school employee has acted inappropriately with students, then the school district has the responsibility to protect the children they have been trusted with. When they fail to do this and the offender acts inappropriately again, the victims of those actions have the option to seek civil damages from the system that failed them.
Get Help Today
If you or a loved one has been harmed by school district worker, then the time to start exploring your legal options is now. The Senators (Ret.) Firm, LLP, our dedicated California civil attorneys have recovered millions of dollars in relief for clients who have been harmed and wronged by the institutions they trusted their well-being with.
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