Former LA high school athletic trainer pleads no contest to charges related to sexual assault of 12 teenagers – Daily Bulletin

VAN NUYS – A former athletic trainer who worked at two high schools in the San Fernando Valley pleaded no contest Monday to charges of sexually assaulting 12 teenage girls.

Richard Alexander Turner, now 65, was immediately sentenced to 36 years in prison and ordered to register as a sex offender for life after his plea to one count of rape, three counts of sexual penetration of an unconscious person by fraud, four counts of sexual penetration with violence and five counts of sexual assault by fraud, according to Deputy District Attorney Cindy Wallace.

The plea came as a hearing was set to take place to determine if there was enough evidence for the case against Turner to go to trial.

The crimes occurred with one girl while Turner was working at Van Nuys High School in 2017 and at Birmingham Community Charter High School in 2021 and 2022, Wallace said.

The prosecutor noted that the majority of the crimes occurred on campus while Turner was working as an athletic trainer.

Turner was initially charged in September 2022 involving 10 victims, but charges were subsequently added involving two other student athletes.

“They really wanted to get justice and make sure he couldn’t do this again,” the prosecutor said of the victims, nearly all of whom were in the Van Nuys courtroom.

Turner was initially arrested by Los Angeles police in September 2022 and released on bail after a Birmingham student reported to a school official that he had touched her inappropriately while she sought treatment for an injury, police Capt. Jeff Bratcher said of Los Angeles shortly afterwards told reporters of the arrest.

Detectives then found a 2017 crime report in which another student reported that Turner touched her inappropriately after she reported an injury while practicing basketball at Van Nuys High School, the LAPD captain said in 2022.

That case was dismissed in 2017 by the state’s attorney’s office, which cited a lack of sufficient evidence to prove the case, Bratcher said.

“The reports from both victims were similar and we have requested the media’s assistance in locating witnesses or other victims,” Bratcher told reporters. “In the days that followed, several minors reported that they had been touched inappropriately by the suspect.”

Turner was arrested again on September 22, hours after being released on bail. He has been behind bars ever since, according to jail records.

“The unconsciousness in this particular case actually refers to the fact that they may not have been immediately aware that they were being sexually assaulted,” District Attorney George Gascón told reporters at a September 2022 news conference in which he announced the criminal case against Turner announced. “There have also been cases where violence was used.”