Santee

A Santana High School teacher was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of sexually assaulting a 17-year-old boy after Sheriff’s Department detectives obtained a search warrant for his home and found videotapes he allegedly showed the minor.

Donald Bender, 56, of Lemon Grove was booked at County Jail, then released on his own recognizance. He was also booked on suspicion of exhibition of harmful matter to a minor, cultivation of marijuana and furnishing marijuana to a minor.

Detectives in the sheriff’s Santee child abuse unit had been investigating Bender since March 4, when a school counselor contacted them and said the boy said Bender molested him. The boy also told the counselor at his own school that Bender had offered him marijuana and showed him pornography, Detective Dana Gassaway said. Gassaway would not say what school the boy attends.

“We obtained a search warrant and that’s how we found the marijuana plants,” he said. “The purpose was to seize the videotape and also in the hopes that there may have been other minors or victims on videotapes or in photographs in his possession. And there was.”

The detectives confiscated a photograph of a young boy smoking marijuana, which led them to another male who has since graduated from Santana High School. Detectives would not elaborate on how they located the second youth.