L.A. Unified seeks dismissal of music teacher in abuse case

After this week’s arrest of a teacher for alleged lewd conduct with 23 students, Los Angeles schools Supt. John Deasy is moving swiftly on a separate case, seeking the dismissal of a popular music teacher at Hamilton High School who allegedly had sexual relationships with students.

Two former students, now adults, accuse Vance Miller, 59, of having sex with them while they were in high school. An attorney representing the students has filed one lawsuit for damages and said he is poised to file a second. He also said that additional victims have come forward.

Miller, reached at his home, declined to be interviewed.

Miller was pulled from Hamilton’s highly regarded music, dance and theater program in 2010, when the allegations apparently emerged. He has been suspended with pay since that time.

A police investigation did not result in criminal charges, but the Los Angeles Unified School District opened its own inquiry last fall.

Miller was pulled from the Mid-City campus before Deasy became superintendent last year. Deasy reviewed the case after an inquiry this week from the L.A. Times and decided that he had enough information to dismiss Miller.

“I act on cases when they are brought to my attention or I know about them,” Deasy said. “I am not interested in all the legal-process crap and far more interested in youths’ rights.”

Deasy is expected to ask the Board of Education to vote on the dismissal at next week’s closed-session meeting.

A respected student mentor and a well-regarded teacher and musician, Miller has been a fixture at Hamilton High’s Academy of Music, where he has taught since 1993. He conducted nearly 20 musicals at the school. Before Hamilton, he taught for 18 years in district elementary schools, according to information he posted online.

A lawsuit filed last April alleges that Miller groomed an unnamed victim for molestation with inappropriate conduct that he exhibited with a number of students. This behavior included “kissing students on the lips during class, rubbing up against students in class” and “taking students one on one to a local gym and showering naked with them,” according to the suit.

“Vance Miller counseled Plaintiff about his home life, and his sexual identity,” according to the suit. The student “who, like many adolescents, felt confusion over his sexuality, coveted Vance Miller’s attention” and “fell in love” with Miller, the suit states.

The relationship accelerated quickly into a sexual one, according to the suit, lasting from 1995 to 1998. In 2010, the alleged victim told his mother what had happened. At her urging, he filed a police report.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office declined to file charges, citing lack of evidence. The Los Angeles city attorney also declined to file, citing problems with the statute of limitations.

The alleged victim’s attorney also has filed a claim for damages with L.A. Unified in a second, similar case, also from the 1990s.

“These were boys whose fathers weren’t as involved in their lives and Vance Miller assumed the role of mentorship, counseling and intimacy, and he pushed that intimacy into a sexual realm,” said attorney Anthony DeMarco.

DeMarco said he has found two additional alleged victims after attempting to contact former students.

Employee investigations can sometimes stretch across years, but the nation’s second-largest school system acted quickly last year to dismiss Mark Berndt, a veteran teacher at Miramonte Elementary School charged with nearly two dozen counts of lewd conduct. Investigators said they have photographs of current and former students blindfolded and being spoonfed a milky substance, believed to be Berndt’s semen.

howard.blume@latimes.com

Los Angeles Times staff writer Richard Winton contributed to this report.