Mark Berndt and the Latino Community

                  Miramonte Elementary School is located at 1400 East 64^th St, Los Angles, California 9001.   This school was involved in a major problem some weeks ago because the media found out about ateacher, Mark Berndt, who committed the lewd act on his students. The “Lewd conduct is any unlawful act committed by an individual with the purpose of arousing the libido or sexual interest of themselves or the person towards which this action is directed.” He had been teaching for 32 years and from 2005-2010 23 children from ages 6-10 were victims from Berndt. However no one had found out about it until the fall of 2010 when Berndt went to print the photographs he had taken the children, the guy who print the pictures decided to give them to the police and investigation started. By January 2011 Berndt was removed from teaching and a month later he was fired. Now the question parents are asking is why they found out about this a year later. In the investigation, police was able to find out that this was not the first time Berndt had committed the act, but 18 years ago a 10  year old girl had made a complain about him, but the Counselor told her that it was not nice to invent things about other people. Berndt is now in jail with a $23 million bailed.

        

   The city of South Gate is where the Elementary is at.  This city is highly populated by Latinos; 88,669 Latinos/Hispanic people live in South Gate. Now the question that many are asking is why do such things happen in communities where most of the people who live there are minorities? Latinos come to the Unites States to provide their children with a better education so no one will think that there would be teachers like Berndt who will be using their kids. Base on the experts, povertyand cultural differences are some of the differences that contributed toMiramonte scandal. Latinos, as we are raised, we learn to have respect for the teachers. They are seemed as a mentor, so no one will think teachers would be doing things like those to kids. Also poverty, some people might not know their rights and don’t know what to do. Or if parents are an illegal immigrant they might be scared that if they do something they might get deported. There could be various reasons why this scandal happened in a community highly populated by Latinos. However, Latinos, we should be aware that we live in another country where things are different, so we should get educated  of our right and know what  we can or cannot do in such situations without a fear.