At Rosemead High, generations of students were harassed or groomed for sex as they tried to get an education

Authored by: Matt Drange

Oct 3, 2023, 5:00 AM CT

Clara didn't think much of it when the social science teacher gave her his phone number.

She'd met Alex Rai in her fifth-period journalism class. He was friends with the journalism teacher, Eric Burgess, and often stopped by Room 16 during his prep period to kill time. Burgess introduced Rai to Clara, telling her that Rai had been his student a decade before. Burgess thought they'd get along.

In the weeks that followed, Rai would perch on Clara's desk, leaning over as he asked about her day and who she hung out with after school. He's only a few years older than my sister, Clara thought when Rai texted her one day after volleyball practice. It was a hot Southern California afternoon in 2008, the kind where dry heat radiates off the asphalt. She was bored. Why not pass the time by chatting with the cool teacher?

Soon, Rai was texting her regularly. At first, the messages were flirtatious. Before long, he was calling Clara late at night. She recalled him asking whether she'd had sex yet with any boys her age. Halfway through her senior year, Clara dropped her humanities class so she could become his teacher's aide.

She loved her humanities class. But Rai had encouraged her to make the switch. They could spend more time together, she recalled him telling her, and he could make her truancies from ditching other classes disappear.

Clara remembers her sister warning her not to get too close. She'd heard stories about Rai from girls who'd attended Rosemead with him, when he was a wrestler on a team known as much for its aggressive pursuit of teenage girls as its state champions. But Clara brushed the concerns aside. She didn't show her sister the texts Rai sent, teasing her — "you wish you were sleeping next to me" — and asking if she missed him.

By the time that text arrived, it was spring semester of her senior year. Rai told Clara that he liked the way she looked in her volleyball shorts and asked her to come to class wearing them, she said. While other students read their textbooks, Clara sat with Rai at his desk, where he rubbed her thighs and brushed his hand across the crotch of her pants.

Rai didn't hide his affection for Clara. At Rosemead High School, he didn't have to.

He'd invite Clara's friends to join them for lunch. They'd hang out together until the girls were late to their next class. Before they said goodbye, Rai hugged Clara, usually from behind.

When Rai sent Clara a picture of his erect penis, she showed two of her friends. The girls all laughed and kept it to themselves.

(Rai declined repeated interview requests for this story; his attorney, Leonard Levine, said Rai "adamantly denies engaging in any unlawful conduct with a student or students at Rosemead High School.")

Rai influenced more than Clara's schedule at school. He also shaped her entry into adulthood. She'd dreamed of playing volleyball at an out-of-state university, a goal she'd spent most of her childhood working toward. But Rai suggested she'd be happier if she attended a local community college instead. She said he once found her scrolling through online apartment listings during class and offered her a spare room in his home.

"It was like my senior year would never end," Clara recalled. "He said, 'I'll always be here for you. You don't need a boyfriend — I'm here.'"

Alex Rai wasn't the first Rosemead teacher to groom a student. He wouldn't be the last, either.

Last year, I wrote about Eric Burgess, who had been my journalism teacher, too. Through years of reporting, I learned he had repeatedly groomed teenage girls for sex as administrators failed to act. I had thought my story would close the book on a dark chapter of abuse at our alma mater. It turned out I had only scratched the surface of an open wound. The article prompted a whole new set of stories, whispers that had gone unspoken or unheard for decades. The appalling tips I heard about many of Burgess' colleagues would ultimately prove true.

Students, parents, and alumni have grappled intensely with the scope of abuse at Rosemead since that first story appeared. The resulting reckoning, with students demanding reforms, alumni begging school board members to act, and the sheriff's department opening a criminal investigation, marked a sharp break with the culture of silence that has suffocated Rosemead for decades. Dozens of the former students I spoke with for this story told me that reading about Burgess' victims made them realize that they were not alone. Many shared their experiences with friends and family for the first time; at least nine have sought out therapy to unpack the damage that attending Rosemead High inflicted on them.

The school's roster of educators who exploited students' trust spans generations. Interviews with nearly 300 people, including alumni and their parents, current and former employees, and law enforcement, along with hundreds of pages of documents, including disciplinary records and internal emails, show that widespread reports of abuse have persisted from at least the 1980s through the present day.

Altogether, I corroborated dozens of instances of sexual misconduct, involving 20 different educators, ranging from lewd remarks about students' bodies to statutory rape. Grooming was so rampant that in a couple of cases, more than one educator targeted the same girl. Two teachers appear to have maintained sexual relationships with more than one student at the same time. All of this behavior likely violated district policy; some of it was criminal.

Along the way, leaders at Rosemead and the El Monte Union High School District received alarming tips from faculty, community members, parents, and students. In a handful of cases, they took steps that led to consequences: Calls to the Sheriff's Department. The denial of tenure. Paid administrative leave. But many times, school administrators conducted a cursory investigation before allowing teachers back in the classroom — where some abused again.

Their failures left a community to bear the pain of decades of abuse and manipulation.

Time after time, Rosemead teachers reprimanded for inappropriate behavior kept their jobs. 

An English teacher, RubyAnna Sare, frequently had her teaching assistant give her massages during class, students reported to administrators; one said Sare became angry when the TA did not "massage her right." (Sare was suspended for five days without pay.) A health and safety teacher, Harlan Mayne, often told sexually explicit jokes; one student said in a written complaint that Mayne told a classmate "she is a hooker and charges a penny." And by the time social science teacher Dwain Crum slapped a student on the butt with a newspaper in the hallway, he'd been suspended at least three times for misconduct involving students. All continued teaching.

(Sare said she was investigated "because a group of students colluded to retaliate against me" after being displeased with their grades. Mayne did not respond to requests for comment. Crum declined to comment through his attorney.)

Rosemead High released disciplinary records for 10 teachers identified in this story. School officials claimed that they had no records for the remaining teachers — despite evidence I obtained that they'd investigated credible allegations of misconduct against several of them. For years, school officials discarded investigative documents if they were not added to an employee's official personnel file at the district office, the district's head of human resources, Robin Torres, said in a recent deposition as part of an ongoing public-records lawsuit Business Insider filed against the district. Torres said the district was exploring "being able to keep those electronically in the future."

The district's superintendent, Edward Zuniga, declined several interview requests and didn't specifically address a list of questions for this story, saying in a written statement that "the District does not tolerate any form of harassment. Ensuring a safe and secure environment for both students and staff is a priority." Behind closed doors, Zuniga has insisted to Rosemead employees that the school doesn't have a problem ensuring student safety.

Many of the dozens of Rosemead alumni who shared their stories asked to not use their full name, citing fear of retaliation from a community that has shamed victims in the past. They are referred to in this story by their first or middle name or an initial. I corroborated their accounts through interviews with friends, family, therapists, and classmates, as well as contemporaneous records including text messages, phone call logs, yearbook inscriptions, social-media posts, school transcripts, photos, and childhood mementos.

"I feel like so many of us were victims to the culture," said Kristy, one of three Rosemead alumni who told me they had sex with an educator when they were a student. "And that to me, as a parent now, is mind blowing. Why didn't anybody do anything to protect us?"

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