Redlands teacher charged with engaging in sex acts with underage student

A Redlands High School teacher has been arrested and charged with engaging in multiple sex acts with an underage female student.

Kevin Patrick Kirkland, 56, of Rancho Cucamonga was arrested Tuesday in Arizona and waived extradition back to California.

Kirkland is slated to appear in San Bernardino Superior Court Monday to answer five felony counts of oral copulation with a minor and distributing harmful matter to a minor with the intent to seduce.

The math teacher was placed on administrative leave last month by district administrators after they contacted police in regards to a possible inappropriate relationship with another student.

Redlands police spokesman Carl Baker said an investigation found no evidence of criminal behavior in that case.

School administrators then reported a second possible inappropriate relationship between Kirkland and a female student.

“After conducting an extensive investigation, detectives determined Kirkland had engaged in multiple unlawful sexual encounters from the time she was 16 until March 2016 when the student was 18,” Baker said.

Kirkland was being held at the West Valley Detention Center in Rancho Cucamonga in lieu of $2-million bail.

Detectives are trying to determine if Kirkland made other contacts with minor students outside normal teacher-student interactions.

In recent years the Redlands Unified School District has been troubled by molestation allegations.

In 2014, Citrus Valley High School teacher Laura Whitehurst had a child who was fathered by a teenage student. Whitehurst, 28, pleaded guilty to half a dozen sex crimes with three boys and received a year in jail.

In 2013, Redlands Unified paid $505,000 to settle a lawsuit over allegations a female teacher at Redlands East Valley High School sexually abused a girl.

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