Lewd Conduct

Actor Fred Willard was arrested Wednesday night on suspicion of engaging in a lewd act at an adult theater in Hollywood. Vice officers who were part of a prostitution-enforcement detail spotted the 72-year-old actor "engaged in a lewd act" at the Tiki Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard, Sgt. Chuck Slater of the Los Angeles Police Department told L.A. Now . Though Slater did not elaborate on the alleged misdemeanor, law enforcement sources told...

The Los Angeles Unified School District will pay about $30 million to settle 58 legal claims involving a former Miramonte Elementary School teacher accused of committing lewd acts on children, plaintiffs' lawyers said Tuesday. The settlements are the first in a case that rocked the nation's second-largest school system and prompted a flurry of new policies to better protect students. Each of the victims will receive about $470,000 under the preliminary deal. It is the largest payout in a case involving a single teacher in the district.

George Michael is delighted to be alive, but when he came back to life out of a coma last December, he spent a couple of days speaking in an accent that wasn't his own. While doctors worried that he had brain damage following a horrid bout with pneumonia that included days in a coma, Michael told Britain's LBC radio , it turned out the London-born chap was just channeling a "Bristolian," West Country accent from a British comedy called "Nighty...

A now-retired principal twice failed to report accusations of sexual misconduct by a teacher who this week was charged with molesting 12 students at a Wilmington elementary school, officials said. In 2002 and 2008, the principal was told that the teacher, Robert Pimentel, 57, inappropriately touched a student. But the principal failed to tell law enforcement authorities, as required by law, said L.A. schools Supt. John Deasy. The Los Angeles Police Department began investigating Pimentel only last March, when they learned of more recent allegations at George de la Torre Jr. Elementary School.

A Board of Rights panel, in a session that lasted past midnight, found a Los Angeles police sergeant guilty today on three counts of lewd conduct with male prostitutes and recommended the department's harshest penalty short of firing. The three-member hearing board recommended that Sgt. Emmanuel Valencia, 37, be suspended without pay for six months for engaging in lewd conduct with a male prostitute on two occasions, Lt. Larry Goebel said.

Police cited San Diego Chargers center Courtney Hall for engaging in lewd conduct in public and soliciting a prostitute last Sunday evening, authorities said. Patrol officers spotted Hall, 23, with Anthony Thompson, 26, on the 4000 block of Boundary Street in North Park shortly after 9 p.m., just hours after the Chargers' 20-9 loss at Seattle. Police spokesman Bill Robinson said that Thompson was dressed in women's clothing. Hall, who was released at the scene, faces a court hearing Dec.

Misdemeanor charges of indecent exposure and lewd conduct were lodged against Edwin A. Jones, 54, chairman of the Ventura County Board of Supervisors and former Thousand Oaks mayor, who was subdued by tear gas and arrested last week in Studio City after allegedly exposing himself to a young woman. Police said Jones was at a motel on Ventura Boulevard with a 38-year-old Agoura woman when another motel guest, a 22-year-old mother of two, walked through the courtyard.

An elementary school teacher pleaded innocent Wednesday to felony charges of lewd conduct involving children. Edward Portillo, 56, a teacher at the Bella Vista elementary school in Monterey Park, was arrested Jan. 27. Portillo, who is accused of lewd conduct with four children under age 14, remains in jail in lieu of $400,000 bail.

The former principal of an Orange high school was convicted Thursday of masturbating in a public park. Brent Bailey, 56, resigned this year as head of El Modena High School after being arrested in December by a plainclothes police officer in a restroom at Fullerton's Brea Dam Trails park. He pleaded guilty at a Fullerton court Thursday to engaging in lewd conduct, a misdemeanor, and was sentenced to three years' probation.

After they were sued for creating a public nuisance, the owners of a 24-hour adult bookstore in Hollywood agreed Wednesday to hire security guards to discourage customers from using it for lewd purposes. The city attorney and county district attorney filed the civil suit in Los Angeles Superior Court against Le Sex Shoppe, 4459 Sunset Blvd. Deputy City Atty.

Nick Stahl, the actor who starred as John Connor in "Terminator 3," was arrested Thursday in a Hollywood adult movie shop on suspicion of lewd conduct. He's facing a misdemeanor lewd conduct charge after being taken in by Los Angeles Police Department officers during a routine operation, L.A. Now reported . Stahl, 33, was found alone in a private booth, watching an adult movie and committing a "lewd act," law enforcement told TMZ. The arrest occurred around 6 p.m., with Stahl released a few hours later.

A jury has awarded $6.9 million to a 14-year-old boy who was molested by a Los Angeles Unified School District teacher when he was a fifth-grade student. The judgment, among the largest ever awarded in a district molestation case, comes at a time when L.A. Unified faces close to 200 pending molestation and lewd conduct claims arising from another teacher's alleged conduct at Miramonte Elementary School. Tuesday's jury award stems from acts committed by Forrest Stobbe, a veteran teacher at Queen Anne Place Elementary School in the Mid-Wilshire area.

WASHINGTON -- A former senator. A scandal. A court case over campaign spending.  Not John Edwards. This time, it's former Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho), who's fighting the Federal Elections Commission's attempt to force him to pay back more than $200,000 in campaign funds. Craig used the funds for his legal expenses in connection with his 2007 arrest at a men's restroom.  The FEC contends the expenses were "not made in connection with his campaign for federal office or for ordinary and necessary expenses incurred in connection with his duties as a senator.

After checking classroom lists attached to orange poster boards outside Miramonte Elementary School on Tuesday, about 900 children passed through an entry gate and headed for the blacktop. A dozen students played kickball for as long as they could get away with it. One boy fist-bumped a teacher he recognized. Just the normal bustle and excitement of the first day of school. But to Miramonte's teachers, it was redemption. After the January arrest of former colleague Mark Berndt for alleged lewd conduct, followed by the arrest of a second teacher for unrelated alleged lewd conduct, the entire staff had been ordered off the campus.

Just over a week after his arrest in a Los Angeles porn theater, Fred Willard was making the obligatory celebrity late night chat show appearance to set the record straight. It's a path pioneered by Hugh Grant in 1995 after he appeared on "The Tonight Show"  to discuss his arrest with a prostitute. Willard appeared Thursday night on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon"and wasted no time in bringing up his arrest by uniformed LAPD officers on July 18 inside the Tiki Theatre in Hollywood.

Fred Willard, arrested Wednesday night in Hollywood on suspicion of lewd conduct, has denied any wrongdoing. "With all due respect to the individual officer, our belief [is] that Fred did nothing in any violation of any law," lawyer Paul Takakjian said Thursday in a statement to L.A. Now . "We will be working vigorously to clear his name in this matter. " Willard, 72, was arrested by uniformed LAPD vice officers at the Tiki Theater on Santa Monica Boulevard. The actor was allegedly "engaged in a lewd act," according to Sgt. Chuck Slater, who did not elaborate.  PHOTOS: Celebrity mug shots The "Best in Show" actor told a TMZ camera crew on Thursday that the arrest was "a big misunderstanding," "a strange situation" and "a difference of opinion.

George Michael is delighted to be alive, but when he came back to life out of a coma last December, he spent a couple of days speaking in an accent that wasn't his own. While doctors worried that he had brain damage following a horrid bout with pneumonia that included days in a coma, Michael told Britain's LBC radio , it turned out the London-born chap was just channeling a "Bristolian," West Country accent from a British comedy called "Nighty...