A high school teacher in Lake Elsinore has been convicted of committing sex crimes against one of his former students and is scheduled to be sentenced in September.
Russell Warren Strange, 60, of Canyon Lake, was found guilty on July 15 of five counts of lewd acts on a child 14 or 15 years old with the perpetrator being at least 10 years older and five counts of sexual penetration with a foreign object, all felonies. Strange was acquitted of five counts of oral copulation of a person under age 16 and three counts of unlawful intercourse by a person over 21, Riverside County Superior Court records show.
Strange, a teacher at Temescal Valley High, was placed on unpaid administrative leave in January 2019 and is still employed by the Lake Elsinore Unified School District.
“LEUSD is aware that employee Russell Strange was convicted of several charges against him in a criminal matter,” district spokeswoman Melissa Valdez said in an email. “The district is moving towards the next steps concerning Mr. Strange’s employment.”
The charges were filed in 2018, almost 20 years after the girl said she had a relationship with Strange for several months beginning when she was 14 years old. It was unclear why so much time elapsed between the assaults and the charges. The accuser said Strange was her basketball and softball coach and history teacher, according to a sworn declaration written by a sheriff’s investigator to obtain an arrest warrant.
The accuser, identified in court records as Jane Doe, estimated that they had intercourse 30 times and oral sex 20 times in 1999 and 2000. The accuser’s father uncovered the relationship when he caught his daughter sneaking out of the house, the investigator’s declaration said.
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