A former Beckman High School teacher who secretly installed hidden cameras in bathrooms on the campus was sentenced last week to more than 17 years in federal prison, but an ongoing civil lawsuit filed by some of his victims alleges that school leaders should have done more to protect them.
Siu Kong Sit, 38, pleaded guilty earlier this year to possession of child pornography. Last week, U.S. District Judge John W. Holcomb ordered Sit, a Rowland Heights resident, to spend 210 months in federal prison, as well as a lifetime on supervised release once he is out of lockup.
Along with being a teacher, Sit was also a high school robotics team coach.
According to his plea deal, Sit beginning in 2020 began secretly installing hidden cameras in restrooms at the school and regularly reviewed the video footage and downloaded videos that were of particular interest to him. In May 2022, according to the plea deal, Sit placed a hidden camera in the restroom of a hotel room in Texas where he and students were staying while taking part in a robotics tournament.
Federal prosecutors allege that between 2020 and 2023 Sit “viewed and downloaded hundreds of images of children and adults, in various states of undress, using restrooms.” Some of the victims were under the age of 12, according to prosecutors.
The cameras, as well as two external storage drives Sit had also installed on the campus, were discovered in February 2023. According to attorneys representing some of the victims, a campus maintenance worker discovered one of the hidden devices in a bathroom by the swimming pool deck at the Beckman High School campus.
Investigators, during a search of a hard drive owned by Sit, also found 22 images and one video of suspected child pornography, prosecutors said, including several depicting a toddler engaged in sexual activity.
A lawsuit filed by the Irvine-based Manly, Stewart & Finaldi law firm, which specializes in sexual abuse cases, on behalf of four of Sit’s alleged victims contends that the Tustin Unified School District “knew or should have known that Sit had violated his role as mentor, counselor, advisor and faculty member, and used this position of authority and trust to gain access to children.”
Raquel Cooper, an attorney representing the four former students of Sit’s, said there were “a number of red flags that should have alerted Beckman personnel as to what was going on,” starting with Sit “spending an inordinate amount of time with his students outside of class…