This week sees the first appearance by a Real Housewife of Orange County in our dubious collection.
She must be so proud.
We also have a longtime teacher and union president in Orange County being investigated for sexually assaulting students before he moved to California from Illinois.
Finally, there's the male physician's assistant who had been accused of sexually assaulting a lady patient in Anaheim but was only convicted of misdemeanor battery.
Vicki Gunvalson, who at 54 is the oldest and only original Real Housewives of Orange County cast member, is reportedly the subject of an FBI investigation because of a topless photo of her that was sent to a 15-year-old girl. Tamra Judge, who also appears on the Bravo reality show, apparently distributed the image that was shot in Ireland around on social media to embarrass Gunvalson, reports TMZ, which had a blurred shot of Gunalson flashing what God gave her on their story and also ran it on their TMZ Live show (go to 2:28). The shot being sent to a teen who shared the picture on Twitter led to a woman complaining to the FBI, according to the gossip site, which quoted a Manhattan defense attorney saying nothing likely come of the investigation. “There are a number of federal laws designed to protect children from sexually explicit material through the Internet,” explained Lance Fletcher. “It is illegal … to knowingly use computer services to make obscene material available to a minor under 18 years old.” While there is merit to the claim, Fletcher said, “this type of thing happens on the Internet so often that enforcement is somewhat rare.”
Sean Patrick Aday, the former youth pastor at Grace Community Church of Saddleback Valley in Lake Forest, pleaded guilty Friday to misdemeanor and felony counts related to sexual contact to four females. The 39-year-old is expected to be sentenced to two years in jail and a lifetime of having to register as a sex offender at a hearing scheduled for Dec. 9. When Aday was arrested in November 2015, authorities accused him of sexually assaulting several females ranging from their late teens to early 20s at the Lake Forest place of worship, throughout Orange County and during church sponsored international trips to such locales as Moldova, Costa Rica and South Africa.
He allegedly raped, sodomized and sexually assaulted those who trusted him, including three who showed up to court to lament how a person in a position of trust could ruin their lives like he did. Aday copped to two misdemeanor and two felony counts of sexual battery.
Charles T. Ritz III, who taught in Orange County schools for 30 years, is reportedly being investigated for sexually abusing students in the Chicago area in the mid-1980s, before he came to California. There is no record of a complaint at Orange County schools against the 65-year-old, who left his math teaching position at La Habra High in May, according to the Register's Tony Saavedra, who gets the scoop. Ritz, who was a union president in the Fullerton Joint Union High School District, is accused of having plied students with alcohol before making sexual advances. There were at least four alleged victims and at least one was male, according to Saavedra's report. There is no indication that police and school officials in Illinois alerted Orange County officials about the complaints when Ritz was being hired here—nor is there anything showing OC officials even asked.
Rocael Gomez, a 51-year-old physician's assistant, copped last week to misdemeanor battery of a female patient his age at Anaheim Market Clinic in 2013, but more serious sexual assault charges were dismissed. The La Mirada resident had been facing counts of sexual penetration of an unconscious victim and sexual battery involving an unconscious person. Prosecutors had alleged Gomez touched the woman's breasts during a medical exam and, on Jan. 4, 2013, used his fingers to sexually assault her. After pleading guilty Wednesday to the misdemeanor, Gomez was sentenced to 90 days in jail and three years of informal probation, according to court records.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.