Cops Hunt School's Founders In Sex Case
sheets3inthwind
Crime: Missing
couple lied about their identities, authorities say, and left
students without a campus.
By HUGO MARTIN, Times Staff
Writer
Ty Yiyara claimed to be a former Air Force captain
with a master's degree in social work from Dallas Baptist
University. He and his wife, Tisa, founded a private Afrocentric
school in South Los Angeles two years ago, saying they wanted to
improve the educational atmosphere for inner-city children.
Their Enlightened Minds School was granted nonprofit
status by the state and received funding from a national
scholarship program. Last year, Los Angeles Mayor Richard
Riordan awarded the school founders a proclamation praising them
for their "outstanding work as educators and mentors."
But
police say Yiyara is an impostor and a convicted sex offender
with no apparent military record, whose real name is Joseph
Horace Green. They say that the master's degree, which he posted
at the school, was bought through a mail-order catalog.
Green, 34, and his wife, whose real name is Channell
Nicola Warren, 25, disappeared in early April after a
16-year-old student at the school told police they had sexually
molested her.
When the couple abandoned the school, they
left five full-time teachers out of work and the parents of 50
students scrambling to continue their lessons for the remainder
of the school year.
"There was a real Jekyll and Hyde
thing going on," said Los Angeles Police Department Det. Wes
Potter, who has been trying to locate the couple since
prosecutors issued arrest warrants April 12. A nationwide search
is underway for the couple, who face a total of 13 sex charges.
No state or local authority ever questioned the couple's
background when the school was established because there are few
regulations for private schools. Even accreditation is optional.
"Nobody regulates them," said Roger Wolfertz, an attorney
with the state Department of Education.
As disturbing new
allegations about the couple's extracurricular activities have
emerged, a few parents of students at Enlightened Minds are
trying to start a new school under a different name and in a new
location.
"We are trying to turn this tragedy into a
triumph," said Nana Gyamfi, an attorney who has become a
spokeswoman for other shellshocked parents.
Some of the
students at the kindergarten-through-12th-grade school paid the
$250 per month tuition with scholarships from the Children's
Scholarship Fund, a national philanthropic program for
low-income children.
The parents said they didn't raise
many question about the couple's qualifications because the
teachers were licensed and provided a good educational
alternative to woeful public schools.
But some parents
complained that the administrators didn't put enough money into
books and maintenance of the school.
"I'm extremely upset
at what has happened," said the mother of two students, ages 6
and 10, who asked that her name not be published.
According to police, Green moved to Lancaster from Houston
several years ago and worked as a janitor at a hospital.
In 1996, he was arrested and charged in the Antelope
Valley with three counts of sexually molesting a minor,
according to court records. As part of a plea bargain, he
pleaded no contest to one count of sexual battery and was
sentenced to two years in Chino state prison, records show. He
was also required to register as a sex offender for life.
Not long after he was released from prison in 1998, Green
and Warren showed up in South Los Angeles, assuming the names Ty
and Tisa Yiyara. To open Enlightened Minds School, they leased a
10,000-square-foot commercial building on West 54th Street, a
busy commercial boulevard with storefront churches and hair
salons.
No Military, College Records Are Found
Military officials at the National Personnel Records
Center in St. Louis could not immediately confirm if Green
served in the Air Force. But Det. Potter said he found no record
that Green had spent any time in the military or in college.
Potter said that when Green was arrested on the Lancaster
sexual battery charges, he admitted having bought his degree
through a catalog.
For opening and operating a private
school, the state requires only that a school administrator file
a two-page affidavit, providing basic information such as the
student enrollment and staff size. Warren filed affidavits for
the last two school years under the name Tisa Yiyara.
In
the document, she described herself as the school superintendent
and principal, but parents say Green acted as the
superintendent.
The affidavit, however, required Warren to
certify under penalty of perjury that the school had no employee
with a conviction for a felony or other violent crime. Because
Green's name was not mentioned on the affidavit, state officials
had no way of knowing that a registered sex offender was acting
as the school's superintendent.
Police say Green
registered as a sex offender with Lancaster police under the
so-called Megan's Law. But Los Angeles police say he failed to
tell them that he then was living with Warren in the Mid-City
area of Los Angeles under the name Ty Yiyara. By law, sex
offenders must report to local police every time they move.
In August, The Times published a feature story about an
elaborate mural that a local artist had volunteered to paint at
the school.
Ty Yiyara told The Times that he started the
school after retiring from the Air Force because "we were
concerned about the results of public schools in this area."
In response to the news article, Mayor Riordan issued
proclamations in October praising the muralist and the school
administrators.
A spokesman for Riordan said this week:
"It is unfortunate that so many people were misled, especially
when it involves children."
Using her alias, Warren filed
documents with the California secretary of state's office to
create a nonprofit public benefit corporation for the school.
But investigators discovered that the two were also
operating an online advertising business, using the school's
phone number as the contact number for the business.
According to police and real estate records, the couple
invested in several South Los Angeles properties and bought a
four-bedroom Mid-City home for $290,000. The couple also owned a
white, 37-foot 1999 Fleetwood recreational vehicle, worth about
$100,000, Potter said. Police believe the couple may be living
or traveling in the motor home.
Soliciting Online for a
Woman
While investigating the online marketing business,
Potter found that the couple had also been soliciting at several
Internet sites for women to join them in "a loving
relationship."
On one Internet message board, the couple
placed an ad that said: "We are looking for a pretty Russian
girl who is bisexual and would love to be with a black couple in
Los Angeles, California, and be a second wife." On the couple's
home page, they also invited women to join them "for a close
friendship."
Investigators say Green's 16-year-old victim
from the school was molested in the couple's RV, away from the
campus.
The LAPD's juvenile division is interviewing
parents and other students to determine if other children were
molested by the couple.
"Every day that they are out
there, there are children in danger," Potter said.
Many of
the students left the school as soon as the allegations were
raised. When the school administrators disappeared, so did many
of the transcripts needed so the remaining students could
continue at other schools.
Hoping to continue the
educations of the remaining 20 students, several former teachers
and parents have begun to teach at a borrowed commercial
building in South Los Angeles. Those parents and the teachers
are now planning fund-raisers to start a new Afrocentric school
under the name Adoma Learning Center and Benu Academy. But money
is tight and the future of the proposed new school is uncertain.
"It's really unfair to these children to put them through
this," said the mother of two students.
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