Waipahu High teacher innocent, lawyer says

The lawyer for a high school teacher accused of repeated sex assault against a student insisted Thursday he is innocent and will be acquitted.

Kenneth Shimozono, an attorney for Erik Y. Tamura, 37, of Wahiawa said in a statement that "Mr. Tamura is 100 percent innocent of the charges."

Tamura, the girls cross-country and track and field coach at Wai­pahu High School, made his initial appearance in District Court on Wednesday on three charges of third-degree sexual assault and is scheduled to appear in court again on March 5.

Tamura continued to work at the school and oversee the alleged victim at track practices nearly four months after the girl and her father made their allegations to Vice Principal Corinne Fuji­eda in October, the father said.

Tamura was place on paid leave Thursday after inquiries by the Star-Advertiser.

"Waipahu High School did a full investigation into these allegations and concluded there was no merit to the student’s claims," Shi­mo­zono said. "We ask the public to withhold judgment in this case, and we are confident that Mr. Tamura will be fully exonerated at trial."

The Star-Advertiser is not identifying the father or the girl because she is a 17-year-old minor and continues to run on the track and field team, hoping to earn a college athletic scholarship. The alleged assaults go back to 2010 when the girl was a 15-year-old member of the cross-country team.

The girl’s father questioned why the school did not involve the police as he assumed they would.

Two months after his initial discussion with the vice principal about the allegations, the father discovered in mid-December that no one from the school or Department of Education had alerted police.

Fujieda "told me to let them do the investigation and I should step back," the father said Thursday. "After I told her I want to pursue an investigation, I thought at that point she would call the police and report it."

State law requires a range of medical, governmental and child care officials — including "employees or officers of any public or private school" — to "immediately report" any suspicions to police or the state Department of Human Services when they "have reason to believe that child abuse or neglect has occurred or that there exists a substantial risk that child abuse or neglect may occur in the reasonably foreseeable future."

Anyone who "knowingly fails to provide information" under the law is guilty of a petty misdemeanor.

State Sen. Jill Tokuda, chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, said the law appears to have been directed at mandatory reporting of child abuse allegations perpetrated by parents or guardians.

But, Tokuda said, the DOE needs to follow specific, consistent protocols when allegations of student sex abuse are made against public school teachers.

"Right now both the Department of Education and Board (of Education) have serious questions posed before them," said Tokuda (D, Kaneohe-Kailua). "We need to make sure the policies and procedures are very clear and followed in all cases to make sure everyone involved is treated fairly and the child is taken care of."

The father assumed that police had been notified by school officials when he went to HPD’s Kapolei substation in December, frustrated by Tamura’s continued supervision of his daughter at track practice.

An officer searched HPD’s database in December and told the father that she could find no record of a sexual abuse complaint regarding Tamura, the father said.

A police detective who took over the case told the father "nobody from the school to the top of the DOE filed a police report," the father said. "I was very surprised and frustrated. I thought somebody, from the top level down, would file something."

The detective could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Nearly a month after the detective began interviewing the girl and other potential witnesses, Tamura turned himself in to the police’s main station on Feb. 3, spent the night in custody and was released the next day on $30,000 bail.

The same day Tamura was released, the father received a registered letter signed by Wai­pahu Principal Keith Hayashi saying the school’s investigation concluded that "Erik Tamura did not engage in inappropriate conduct," did not violate Board of Education policies regarding student safety and welfare, and did not violate anti-harassment, bullying or discrimination practices.

Sandra Goya, DOE spokes­woman, said complex-area Superintendent Norman Pang will "be conducting a review of the actions taken by school officials in regards to the employee’s recent arrest."

In October, Leilehua High School teacher Bryan Lindberg was immediately placed on paid, indefinite leave and barred from returning to Leilehua after police arrested him on suspicion of 11 counts of first-degree sexual assault and five counts of third-degree sexual assault of a teenage girl over a five-month period in 2008.

The allegations focused on Lindberg’s tenure as a math teacher at the private Hawaiian Mission Academy, before he began working at Leilehua High School.

But the DOE immediately suspended Lindberg and prohibited him from returning to Leilehua.

Tamura continued to teach and supervise his accuser even after he turned himself in to police, and conducted track practice with his accuser hours after his court appearance.

"A unique set of circumstances and facts are relevant to each case," Goya said in an email Thursday night. "Thus, actions taken by the Department will vary. Comparing one case to another case would be irresponsible."