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…
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“He is befriending them on social media, spending a lot of time with them outside of normal school hours,” Cooper said.. “He was the favorite teacher. They trusted this guy, they loved this guy. The grooming tactics he employed gave him that inherent trust.”
Cooper noted that Sit had to go to each of the hidden campus cameras on a bimonthly basis to get their memory cards, since they weren’t hooked up to a wi-fi network. That meant at least 50 opportunities for someone to catch Sit, the attorney added.
“Somebody should have seen something,” Cooper said. “At the end of the day, they need to supervise their employees who are in constant contact with minors.”
School officials could not be reached for comment.
Cooper said that some of the teens no longer want to take part in school activities such as water polo, swimming or other sports, or have lost their passion for robotics. Some also feel like they are “constantly looking over their shoulder,” the attorney added.
“They just feel a complete violation of privacy and a complete violation of their safety at one of the places they should have felt safe, and that was at school,” Cooper said. “More so, what I found to be most concerning is these kids continue to fear to this day that they are being watched and they are scared to use public bathrooms and changing rooms.”
Along with the civil lawsuit, Sit is still facing four misdemeanor charges of disorderly conduct in Orange County Superior Court. According to federal prosecutors, the criminal charges in state court are related to the alleged adult victims of the hidden videos. Sit has pleaded not guilty to those charges, Orange County Superior Court records show.