The San Diego Reader article that CVESD missed when it hired a pedophile

See all posts regarding CVESD teacher John Kinloch.

Two years after the story below was published in the San Diego Reader, John Raymond Kinloch, who testified to having an attraction to young boys, was hired as a teacher by Chula Vista Elementary School District.

Perhaps all teacher candidates should be required to sign under penalty of perjury that they are not sexually attracted to children. It's not a crime to be sexually attracted to children, but it should be a disqualification for working in elementary schools.

It would seem that a pedophile who truly wanted to avoid harming children would stay away from occupations involving children. There are lots of jobs that Kinloch could have found that don't include long, unsupervised hours as the authority figure and caregiver of children. Kinloch knew he was a danger to children, yet he chose give himself the sexual pleasure of constant contact with young boys. Perhaps he should have been paying the taxpayers for seven hours a day of sexual stimulation, rather than having the taxpayers pay him.

A Unique Warmth for Youngsters
By Abe Opincar
San Diego Reader
June 4, 1998

'How did you get this number?" snarled an unidentified male voice at the other end of the line. "John isn't involved involved in anything! Don't ever call here again!"

John's phone number isn't hard to find if you know anything about the enormous amount of information available online. And anyone answering John's phone should already know a little something about the Internet's hair-raising variety of resources.

Last month, John Raymond Kinloch, a history major at San Diego State University, went to Staffordshire, England, to testify in the three-week criminal trial of Christopher Wrigley, a 28-year-old college student accused of trafficking in kiddie porn on the Internet. Wrigley, a psychology major, had been nabbed in Operation Sunburst, a 1995 investigation conducted by English law enforcement to crack down on Internet transmission of child pornography to and from Great Britain. Wrigley's computer files, bristling with almost 700 nude and sexually graphic images of boys aged 5 to 15, also contained information that led investigators to Kinloch in San Diego.

Working through the Justice Department's Office of International Affairs in Washington, D.C., Staffordshire police last year informed the U.S. Attorney's San Diego office of their intention to prosecute Wrigley and of their need for Kinloch to testify at trial. While no legal mechanism permits foreign courts directly to compel U.S. citizens to testify abroad, treaties with certain nations, such as England, allow the U.S. Attorney to cooperate with foreign courts in securing the testimony of American witnesses.

"Of the two young men -- Wrigley and Kinloch -- the Staffordshire police convinced us that Wrigley was clearly the more dangerous," says Mitch Dembin, Chief of General Crimes Section in the local U.S. Attorney's office. "We approached Kinloch and offered him immunity in exchange for his testimony at Wrigley's trial. He agreed."

Because British law is very cautious about who may be interviewed and what may be printed about a criminal proceeding in progress, Wrigley's trial has received little publicity in England's national press. But in Staffordshire, the case is well known.

"Probably because it was revealed that just before he was arrested, Wrigley got a job as a high school teacher," says Gill Abbott, a reporter for the Staffordshire Sentinel who covered the trial. "And because Wrigley is very attractive. He's handsome. He's got that Hugh Grant floppy hair.

"He's also very well-spoken and very self-confident. John Kinloch was also very self-confident and well-spoken, but he's not as good-looking as Wrigley. Kinloch's sort of short and slight with a full head of dark, almost black hair, and a very thin mustache. I think the jury sort of took to [Kinloch] because he had that all-American college boy sort of thing."

In the course of his testimony, Kinloch stated that he was "homosexual" but was attracted only to "teenage boys and younger." He admitted that in 1995 he had exchanged pictures of boys as young as five with Wrigley after the two had struck up a friendship in an Internet discussion group about music.

Kinloch told the Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court, "In the beginning it was discussion and e-mail, then it moved into transmission of pictures. At first it was pictures of ourselves, later it was boys. At first it was nothing indecent, later on you could class it as indecent." When asked if he believed Wrigley shared his sexual tastes, Kinloch answered, "I would not just tell anyone about my sexual preferences. There would have to be trust-building. I think you could say we both knew about each other. If I had not thought he had similar tastes, I would have not divulged information to him."

Wrigley, too, admitted to a unique warmth for youngsters. When the jury was told he had been on a Cub Scout weekend two days before he was arrested, Wrigley said he liked to help children and had consoled one Cub Scout in particular. Wrigley said, "[The Cub Scout] was a child who was experiencing many problems both in and out of school, and I took him under my wing to help him out."

But Wrigley maintained his innocence of the child-pornography charges. In his testimony he stated that rather than being a pedophile he was simply a psychology student engaging in an elaborate experiment involving child pornography and pedophile sexuality. The only reason he exchanged images with Kinloch and another American named Sonny Delite, he said, was to determine what sort of pornography interested pedophiles. Testifying in Wrigley's defense, Cambridge professor Donald West, a pedophilia expert, told the court he believed Wrigley's alleged experiment would be useful in research into pedophilia.

Six of the 12-member Stoke-on-Trent jury believed Wrigley's defense. On May 16, after deliberating for six hours, the jury foreman informed the judge that it was unlikely that the jury would be able to arrive at a verdict. The Crown Court intends to try Wrigley again sometime in the next six months in Birmingham, where the case has received less attention.

Staffordshire police are unable to comment on the matter and declined to state whether or not John Kinloch would be brought again to England to testify. Mitch Dembin of the U.S. Attorney's office says that Kinloch is still bound by the terms of his immunity agreement.

"It's a two-way street. Kinloch agreed to testify wherever, whenever. As long as he complies, we don't prosecute. None of his words will be used against him."

Wrigley is free on bail until his retrial.

CVESD hired a teacher profiled in the Reader as a child pornographer

See all posts regarding CVESD teacher John Kinloch.

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

CVESD is still getting fallout from Rick Werlin's years as Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources.

Officials claim to be angry that they did not know in 2000 about John Raymond Kinloch's involvement in a 1998 child pornography case that was described in the San Diego Reader. Kinloch was recently arrested for child pornography.

But the truth is that current Superintendent Francisco Escobedo is pals with Rick Werlin, the Assistant Superintendent of Human Resources responsible for hiring Mr. Kinloch, and Maria Guasp, who helped Mr. Werlin implement his policy of concealing the truth about teachers who committed crimes.

When Mr. Werlin was running Human Resources, Board Members Pamela Smith and Larry Cunningham were more than willing to allow Mr. Werlin to ignore the law. Then they managed to quash subpoenas to testify about their actions. They supported a criminal cover-up of the actions of administrators, union leaders and Castle Park teachers.

The district managed to unload Werlin, and when West Contra Costa County asked for information about Werlin, CVESD didn't breathe a word about the $100,000s in legal expenses that Werlin incurred. One wonders how much CVESD officials actually care about children.

CVESD seems to have more than its share of child pornographers. October, a another CVESD teacher was arrested for child porn.

Chula Vista teacher arrested in child porn case
By Pauline Repard and Susan Shroder
UTSD
Dec. 5, 2012

...Chula Vista Elementary School District officials are angry that they did not know about the case when they hired John Raymond Kinloch in 2000, spokesman Anthony Millican said.

Kinloch, 41, was taken into custody Friday following an investigation by the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. He was booked into jail on counts of possession of child pornography, using a minor in an obscene manner and luring a minor for a sex offense, according to the jail website.

The charges do not involve students in Kinloch’s class or in the district, Millican said.

He said Kinloch has taught at Wolf Canyon Elementary School since 2009 and was currently teaching first grade. Kinloch previously taught at Feaster Charter School.

He is on administrative leave and will not be on campus while the legal proceedings continue, Millican said.

Millican said the San Diego Reader published a story in June 1998 that said Kinloch, then a San Diego State student, was going to England to testify in the criminal trial of Christopher Wrigley, a college student accused in trafficking in child pornography. Wrigley’s files contained information that led investigators to Kinloch, and he was offered immunity by federal officials in the United States and England to testify, the Reader reported. He testified during the trial that he exchanged pornographic images of young boys with Wrigley, according to the Birmingham Post & Mail, a British newspaper.

Debra McLaren, principal at Wolf Elementary, sent a letter to parents Friday informing them of the arrest...