In California, a man who used to be a teacher was caught in a teenage girl’s bedroom and is now in jail.
Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office records show that Patrick John Mester, 65, is charged with two counts of setting up a sexual encounter with a minor and engaging in sexual acts with a 14 or 15-year-old minor.
When the defendant was first arrested in 2021, he lost his job as a teacher at James C. Enochs High School in Modesto, a big city about 80 miles west of Oakland.
The criminal investigation took a lot longer than expected.
A press release says that the ex-band teacher was arrested again on Wednesday by the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office Special Victims Unit for “lewd and lascivious acts against a minor.”
It’s not clear why the defendant was briefly arrested by the Modesto Police Department in March 2021, but they thought he was bothering or abusing a child under the age of 18. The bail was set at $5,000, and Mester was freed in the end.
The Modesto Bee says that at the time, he was thought to be having an inappropriate relationship or talking to a student in a bad way. The student in question was identified by authorities as a girl who is 16 years old.
Not much was known about what happened.
That being said, though, was enough to get him fired.
Modesto City Schools said in a statement at the time that they “took immediate action to make sure he has no contact with students and revoked his right to visit our facilities.” This order will stay in place as long as the criminal case goes on.
Since 2003, the defendant worked for the school district, first as a music teacher at a different high school. After that, he split his work between the two schools.
He switched to Enochs in 2008. The paper was told that he had passed all necessary background checks and got regular training on how to protect children from abuse and harassment.
After being freed on the relatively minor charge, Mester is said to have gone looking for the 16-year-old girl again.
It was in October 2021 that Mester was found in the same student’s bedroom by the student’s mother, which led to a second investigation by the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office.
“The victim was talked to several times after the incident.” Since then, the District Attorney’s Office and the Sheriff’s Office have worked together.
A spokesperson for the sheriff’s office told SFGate that the girl at the center of the case has helped with “active and ongoing investigations” since Mester’s second arrest. The spokesperson also said, “Serious cases like this need to be carefully built over time.”
The defendant is being held on bail of $650,000.
