Former Prep School Teacher Charged With Sexually Abusing Student

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — A former teacher at an exclusive all-girls prep school has been charged with felony sex crimes involving a student, authorities said Wednesday.

Joseph Thomas Koetters, 47, was charged Tuesday with oral copulation and penetration with a foreign object involving someone under 18, the Los Angeles Police Department said.

Koetters was the head of the English department at the private Marlborough School in Hancock Park before leaving at the end of the 2013 school year for a position at a Pasadena school.

The victim in the case was a 16-year-old girl in one of Koetters' English classes. The suspect is accused of initiating a year-long sexual relationship with the teen in 2000.

The girl's attorney said Koetters impregnated her, and she later miscarried.

The victim contacted police after reading an article written by another alleged victim who reported similar abuse in a June 2014 essay in the magazine, xojane and was later published in an issue of Vanity Fair.

Several other alleged victims have come forward in the case, but one of the incidents occurred outside the statute of limitations. The other alleged crime occurred in Nevada.

Koetters is free on $140,000 bail and was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday. If convicted he faces five years in prison.