A Ukiah High School teacher arrested earlier this month for alleged misconduct with a 17-year-old former student may have to register as a sex offender if convicted of the charge, according to the Mendocino County District Attorney’s Office.
Ben O’Neill, 34, was arrested Sept. 4 by the Ukiah Police Department following an investigation into allegations that the defendant, a teacher at Ukiah High School, acted inappropriately with the teen on campus.
According to DA spokesman Mike Geniella, the girl was 17 and had graduated from Ukiah High at the time of the incident, which occurred when she visited O’Neill at the school in September of 2017. Geniella said the contact between the two “involved hugging in a storage room adjacent to the classroom.”
The incident was not reported to school officials until May of 2018, at which time Geniella said a third party notified employees of the Ukiah Unified School District, which then notified the UPD. After UPD detectives conducted a thorough investigation, O’Neill was arrested this month on the misdemeanor charge of “annoying or molesting a child under 18.”
Geniella provided these penal code descriptions of 647.6:
(a) (1) Every person who annoys or molests any child under 18 years of age shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars ($5,000), by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or by both the fine and imprisonment.
(2) Every person who, motivated by an unnatural or abnormal sexual interest in children, engages in conduct with an adult whom he or she believes to be a child under 18 years of age, which conduct, if directed toward a child under 18 years of age, would be a violation of this section, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars ($5,000), by imprisonment in a county jail for up to one year, or by both that fine and imprisonment.
Geniella said an arraignment for O’Neill has been “tentatively set for Oct. 4” in Mendocino County Superior Court, and that “if there is a plea or conviction, O’Neill could face revocation of his license to teach. He also could be required to register as a sex offender.”
