SANTA ANA, Calif. – A former middle school teacher so popular that students clamored to be in her class wept and apologized Friday, moments before she was sentenced to six years in prison for molesting two former male students and one of their friends.
“There is no excuse for what I did,” said Sarah Suzanne Bench-Salorio, 29, as she sat handcuffed at a counsel table in a tenth floor courtroom. “I will carry with me forever the remorse and utter regret I possess for having been the cause of such betrayal, embarrassment and hurt.”
But, she added, “I am a good person. I made some horrible mistakes. … I will beg and pray for the forgiveness of the families and all of those that I hurt.”
The parents of two of her victims, however, sat in the courtroom gallery dabbing at their eyes and shaking their heads from side to side.
The mother of another victim said she was angry that Bench-Salorio wasn’t going to get more time in prison.
“A teacher’s fundamental responsibility is to make sure her students are safe,” the mother said. “But here not only does she fail to protect her students, but she became the very predator they needed protection against.”
The mother said that at first Bench-Salorio seemed to be the type of teacher who really connected with students, and that most children wanted to be in her class. But then she learned that the teacher had seduced her pre-teenage son.
“She violated the trust and respect we naturally had for her as a teacher,” the mother said. “Her actions have devastated my son.”
“She is a pedophile and a sexual predator,” said the mother of another victim.
“My son had his youthful innocence stolen from him,” said a father.
Bench-Salorio pleaded guilty in September to 29 counts of improper sexual contact with the three boys over a period of months when Superior Court Judge Richard E. Toohey promised he would sentence her to no more than six years in prison.
She had been an outgoing and energetic first-year teacher at Santiago Middle School in Orange, Calif., before her arrest in January 2005 after one of the boys told his parents what had been going on for months.
Bench-Salorio was accused of grooming students through dinners, e-mails and phone calls. She met one of the students, who was then 11, and started an affair with him while working as a long-term substitute at Panorama Elementary School.
She met the second victim when she taught seventh-grade English in the fall of 2004 at Santiago, engaging in sexual activity with him for four months until December 2004.
Orange police detectives said she met the third victim because he was a friend of the other victims.
Her arrest caused Orange Unified School District administrators to consider revoking Santiago Middle School’s charter. A charter allows parents and teachers to have more involvement in school affairs.
Trustees eventually renewed the charter in June to the applause of parents and teachers who argued that the sex scandal was an isolated incident.
Parents of two of the boys later filed lawsuits against the school, claiming that administrators and teachers neglected warning signs of Bench-Salorio’s predatory behavior toward their children.
At the sentencing hearing Friday, Bench-Salorio’s parents wept in the gallery but declined to comment.
Defense attorney Al Stokke asked Toohey for a three-year sentence, claiming there is a difference between a woman having sexual contact with male children, and a man committing the same kind of crime against female children.
“There is a distinction,” he said. “It’s not right. It’s still a crime. But it should make for a distinction.”
Deputy District Attorney John Christl, however, disagreed. He said a boy being molested by a female teacher is no less of a victim than a girl molested by a male teacher.
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(c) 2006, The Orange County Register (Santa Ana, Calif.).
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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
AP-NY-01-07-06 1646EST
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