Lewd Conduct

A former tow truck driver, accused of lewd acts with two young boys who took turns sleeping in his bed, was sentenced Friday to three years probation, during which he will be barred from being alone with anyone under age 18.

A television director was arrested Wednesday for secretly filming women using a restroom at a Warner Center office complex, Los Angeles police said. Niles Goodsite, 52, of Chatsworth, was booked for the misdemeanor charge of loitering in a restroom with the intention to commit a lewd act, police said. The incident occurred after Goodsite sneaked into a first-floor bathroom at Warner Gateway Plaza, 21820 Burbank Blvd., at about 11:55 a.m.

An Orange middle-school teacher was ordered Friday to stand trial on charges that she engaged in lewd conduct with two students. A pretrial hearing was set for Feb. 8. Sarah Bench-Salorio, 28, has pleaded not guilty to 28 charges filed against her for the alleged trysts with her former English students. After listening to testimony from two boys in a preliminary hearing that ended Friday, Judge John D. Conley concluded that there was evidence that Bench-Salorio committed the crimes.

British actor Hugh Grant was charged Thursday with lewd conduct, two days after his arrest for allegedly having sex in his car with a Hollywood prostitute, officials said. The 23-year-old woman faces the same charge and two additional counts of violating her probation on prostitution convictions, said Mike Qualls, a spokesman for the Los Angeles city attorney's office.

An Orange County judge has issued an arrest warrant for a piano teacher about to go on trial for alleged lewd conduct with an 8-year-old girl, authorities said Wednesday. Daniel Peter Gaudin, 57, failed to appear for a pretrial hearing Friday, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Aleta Bryant, who is prosecuting the case. Gaudin, of Orange, was free on $100,000 bail after being arrested in April. Though his trial is set to begin Jan.

Undercover police officers have arrested 33 people for lewd conduct and solicitation during a three-night sweep of adult businesses along Garden Grove Boulevard, authorities said Monday. The sweeps were conducted Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights along areas of the boulevard throughout the city where adult bookstores are located. However, none of the businesses were ordered closed, according to Garden Grove Police Lt. Ron Weigand.

An Encino man hanged himself in a jail cell two hours after he was arrested on suspicion of lewd conduct, Los Angeles police said Thursday. Edwardo Marin, 33, died at Northridge Hospital at 10:45 p.m. Wednesday, about an hour after he was found collapsed next to a bed in his cell at the West Valley Division jail, police said. Police said he was in a cell alone when he hanged himself from a bedpost using his shoelaces. Prisoners in other cells alerted guards, police said.

Augustin Ramirez, who left a Mexican village with his 14-year-old sister-in-law two months ago and was hunted down by her brother, pleaded not guilty Monday to six counts of lewd conduct with a minor. The brother had told authorities that Ramirez, 24, kidnaped the girl and was holding her as a sex slave, but she discounted that story at a court hearing last month. Ramirez's attorney, Sheldon Sacks, said that "there was no kidnaping, there was no sex enslavement. The young girl went willingly."

A Midway City man was arrested in Nevada on Monday on suspicion of lewd conduct and firing shots at a neighbor after he called 911 three times from his car phone as he drove toward Las Vegas. "What we did was contact the phone company, and they had some means of establishing his whereabouts" by tracing the cellular phone, said Lt. Steve Fauchier, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department.