-/AFP/Getty Images Mark Henry Berndt, 61 has been arrested for allegedly taking photos of blindfolded and gagged students with roaches on their faces and spoons of semen to their mouths. 
 
 A lawyer for alleged victims at Miramonte Elementary School is implicating a third teacher at the troubled campus where one staffer allegedly fed students his semen and another fondled second-graders. 
 
 Two female students allegedly abused by teacher Mark Berndt claim their female teacher regularly pulled them out of class and escorted them to Berndt’s door for his twisted games, lawyer Brian Claypool told the Daily News Tuesday. 
 
 Berndt, 61, was arrested last week and charged with binding and blindfolding dozens of students and subjecting them to lewd acts for his sexual pleasure between 2005 and 2010, authorities said. 
 
 ENTIRE STAFF SUSPENDED IN SEX ABUSE PROBE AT LOS ANGELES ELEMENTARY SCHOOL 
 
 “I believe she aided and abetted him in carrying out abusive acts. I believe she worked in concert with Mr. Berndt,” Claypool said of the third, unnamed teacher. “They had adjoining classrooms, and he’d come in every other day in the middle of the day, and he’d go up to her and whisper in her ear. She’d start giggling and then pick out two pretty girls and walk them over to the door.” 
 
 Claypool said he interviewed both of the girls involved, and they independently corroborated each other’s story. They also told him Berndt regularly acted as the female teacher’s substitute and brought food to her classroom covered with a creamy substance, he said. 
 
 GIRL WAS VICTIM OF BOTH TEACHERS CHARGED IN L.A. CHILD ABUSE CASES 
 
 “He would tell them, ‘Your teacher will be out again tomorrow, so I’m having a party for you,’” Claypool, who represents five victims in the overall case, said. “He would make food and bring in for kids and say, ‘Don’t tell your parents.’ He made homemade cookies with semen as the cream and fed it to the kids.” 
 
 Investigators with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have not publicly identified any suspects beyond the two teachers arrested last week. 
 
 A prosecution source said the District Attorney’s Office was not aware of a related case involving a female teacher. 
 
 “I am 100% sure this (female) teacher had to have known something,” Claypool told The News. 
 
 Asked what motivation she might have had for letting a colleague abuse her students, Claypool said that was a question for investigators. 
 
 TWO TEACHERS CHARGED IN L.A. CHILD ABUSE CASES KNEW EACH OTHER 
 
 “Maybe it was for control, the thrill of getting away with something. The pretext for all of this was a game,” he said. 
 
 He said he’s demanding that Berndt be tested for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. 
 
 Miramonte, meanwhile, is closed Tuesday and Wednesday after parents staged a protest at the campus Monday morning. 
 
 District officials announced Monday night that the entire staff would be temporarily transferred as investigators continue to probe what staffers might have known about the two teachers: Berndt and Martin Springer. 
 
 The “clean sweep” is meant to rebuild confidence, Los Angeles Superintendent of Schools John Deasy said. 
 
 Springer, 49, was arrested Friday on suspicion of fondling two girls inside his classroom sometime in the last three years. 
 
 Investigators have not disclosed any evidence of conspiracy between the two men. 
 
 Claypool said students have described them as “best buds.” 
 
 The sickening case went public last week when authorities said Berndt photographed dozens of students in shocking situations for his own kicks. 
 
 Some pics show children with a giant live cockroach crawling on their faces or a blue plastic spoon allegedly filled with his semen up to their mouths, authorities said. 
 
 Berndt allegedly told the kids they were playing a “tasting game,” a Sheriff's Department source told The News. 
 
 District officials originally said they were not aware of any complaints against the teachers, but prior accusations have since surfaced. 
 
 On Saturday, authorities revealed that a female student may have been the victim of both teachers. 
 
 The girl and her parents complained to school officials in 2008 when she was a student in Berndt's second-grade class and brought home strange pictures, the Los Angeles Times reported. 
 
 Officials dismissed the complaints, and the girl was transferred to Springer's class, where he allegedly touched her on the leg and thigh during the school day, sources told The Times. 
 
 Last Thursday, authorities acknowledged that 18 years ago, a 10-year-old girl claimed Berndt tried to fondle her. The case was investigated by the Sheriff's Department, but prosecutors declined to pursue the case citing a lack of evidence, officials said. 
 
 Berndt was removed from his classroom last year after a pharmacy photo technician printed some of the disturbing images and alerted local police. 
 
 ndillon@nydailynews.com ||||| LOS ANGELES – The charges are shocking, but the choice of victims comes as little surprise. 
 
 The horrors alleged at Miramonte Elementary School echo previous cases of sexual abuse: vulnerable children, plied with attention and gifts and groomed to trust adult predators. 
 
 The abuses claimed here may be different — children blindfolded, gagged and fed a substance investigators say was semen. But the setting follows a pattern alleged at Penn State University, where former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky is accused of using a charity he founded to target vulnerable boys from single-parent homes or troubled families, people unlikely to speak out. 
 
 At Miramonte, the victims could hardly have been more disadvantaged: The 1,400 students are virtually all from poor Latino homes, a majority from immigrant families where English isn't spoken at home, and some with parents lacking legal immigrant status. It's a voiceless community where fear is ingrained — fear of authority, fear of the police, fear of immigration enforcement, fear of retribution. 
 
 The hard-pressed barrio school is just the kind of place where an adult with bad intentions could take advantage of a child, knowing there was little chance a victimized family would report the acts. Or if they did, little chance they would be believed. 
 
 "You have lots of the very poor who don't even know what their rights are," says Martha Escutia, a former state senator who once represented the south Los Angeles neighborhood. "You have the undercurrent of immigration, undercurrent of poverty. Miramonte is not Malibu. It's not a sophisticated community. 
 
 "It's a perfect recipe for a predator." 
 
 It's a recipe that's been followed here before. 
 
 A former teacher's aide, Ricardo Guevara, is serving a 15-year sentence in state prison after being convicted in 2004 of sexually abusing three kindergarten girls at Miramonte. The Los Angeles school system was ordered to pay $1.6 million to his three victims' families. 
 
 "There are striking similarities," says Beverly Hills lawyer Keith Davidson, who represented those girls. "It's amazing that you'd have lightning strike twice and then three times in the same school." 
 
 Davidson now represents four children, three boys and one girl, ages 9 to 13, who were students of accused teacher Mark Berndt, the man at the center of the scandal. 
 
 Berndt, 61, who was removed from his third-grade class a year ago, was charged last month with 23 counts of committing lewd acts on children ages 6 to 10 from 2005 through 2010. Investigators say they have found 600 photographs Berndt took of the children, many performing what he told them was a game. In some, the children are eating cookies with a substance the district attorney's office alleges was Berndt's semen. 
 
 While investigating claims against Berndt, the Los Angeles sheriff's department brought charges against another Miramonte teacher. Martin Springer, 49, pleaded not guilty this week to charges he fondled a second-grade girl. 
 
 Springer taught at Miramonte for 26 years. Berndt taught there 32 years, a span that saw the neighborhood transform from a heavily African-American population to almost uniformly Latino. 
 
 Berndt had been the subject of complaints before. The sheriff's department investigated a September 1993 incident at the school, but prosecutors decided they didn't have enough evidence to charge him, said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for District Attorney Steve Cooley. 
 
 The school's principal, Martin Sandoval, did not respond to a request for comment. 
 
 In a separate incident, school system officials said they fired a female teacher's aide at the school in 2009, after a mother reported finding love letters the aide wrote to her 11-year-old son. 
 
 The Los Angles Times on Friday reported that the Los Angeles Unified School District paid Berndt $40,000 to drop a challenge to his dismissal last year. The firing took Berndt off the district payroll. But he fought to keep his job through an appeal process that lasted until he settled with the school system and resigned in June. 
 
 The payout consisted of four months of back salary plus reimbursement for the cost of health benefits, according to the newspaper. 
 
 The settlement with Berndt came in the face of a dilemma, said L.A. Unified general counsel David Holmquist. A hearing on the dismissal was pending and the district didn't have evidence to justify the firing because the Sheriff's Department investigation was ongoing. 
 
 "We were told we could not do any investigation" to avoid interfering with a law enforcement probe, Holmquist told the Times. "We didn't have any evidence, and we couldn't put on any witnesses. We didn't have anything to successfully defend a challenge." 
 
 A father's dilemma 
 
 One father complains that he did not learn his 10-year-old daughter was a victim until after Berndt's recent arrest. Raymundo, 39, who spoke only on condition his last name not be used because he immigrated illegally, says that when Berndt was removed from teaching early in 2010, parents were not told why. 
 
 "For a year, we didn't know anything about this," he says in Spanish. "The school was trying to keep this under wraps. … This is very bad. The school is almost 100% Latino. It's because of that they discriminate against us. We are poor people." 
 
 He says the school has not responded to his requests for information. So far, he's spoken about the case only with someone from the sheriff's office. His is one of eight families represented by a lawyer, Jessica Dominguez, who filed three lawsuits against the L.A. school system Tuesday. 
 
 Raymundo says when he first heard about Berndt's arrest, he didn't want to do anything about it. He didn't want to call attention to his family because he has been living in the country illegally for six years. He says the allegations have been so traumatic, he went to the emergency room twice for anxiety attacks and migraines. 
 
 Still, he didn't want to come forward until Dominguez and his sister convinced him that he would not be deported. In fact, the family may qualify for a special visa providing legal status to crime victims who cooperate with prosecutors, Dominguez and other lawyers say. 
 
 "I was scared," Raymundo said. "Whenever the police are involved, no one who is here illegally will come forward, even if he's been robbed … But if we don't speak out, then there will be no justice for our children." 
 
 Gregory Owen, a lawyer working with Dominguez, says sheriff's investigators have counted 23 alleged victims of Berndt, but he represents four more children whose families have not been questioned and who have not come forward because of fear of deportation. Some of those families have photos of Berndt with their children at family functions to which they invited him. 
 
 Owen says some parents framed the photos Berndt gave them and proudly displayed them on shelves, thinking their children had received special attention from a beloved teacher. 
 
 That the children thought it was all a game is "actually worse than when the child knows its happening," Owen says. "When they are told, they say to themselves, 'Why didn't I realize that? Why didn't I stop it?' They feel even more guilty." 
 
 Dominguez says the parents have taken the children to doctors to test for AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. "These mothers can't sleep at night," she says. 
 
 The school will have counselors in the school for the rest of the year. 
 
 Ricardo Antonio Pérez, a lawyer representing several other Miramonte families, says: "The outrage in this community really is with the LAUSD's (Los Angeles Unified School District) habitual failure to protect children." 
 
 Many parents of Miramonte students say they now feel victimized a second time by the school system's reaction to the scandal. Superintendent John Deasy ordered the unprecedented reassignment of the entire faculty and staff of the school. When it reopened Thursday after a two-day closing, new teachers and staff were in their place. 
 
 Official: Removals are a try for 'fresh start' 
 
 Parents protested all week: first, because they were upset that they had not been told before about the sex abuse allegations, and then because the district replaced the entire staff. 
 
 On Thursday, parents protesting the teachers' removal brought their children to school but did not bring them inside. A group of girls played the guitar and sang songs they made up about their teachers leaving. Police patrolled the front of the school as some parents took their children inside. 
 
 During a news conference outside the school, teachers union President Warren Fletcher called the district's move to replace the teachers "nothing more than a cheap media stunt intended to deflect attention from the fact that a tragedy occurred at the school that had no supervision." 
 
 For children already struggling to understand the arrests of two of their teachers, losing the rest is traumatic, says Maria Guadalupe Garcia, 40, who has two children at Miramonte. She has been a single parent to three children since her husband was deported three years ago. 
 
 She says Miramonte teachers have helped her survive. They took up collections to help her pay her electric bill when she was short, and they counseled her on how to help her children through the deportation. 
 
 "We don't have a lot, so I'm so grateful to those teachers," she says in Spanish. "That's why we are despondent over these drastic changes. 
 
 "It would be as if they took a child away from a parent and put him in foster care," she says. "And the district is not listening to us. Many of us don't speak English. We are poor and ignorant — at least that's how they treat us." 
 
 Raymundo's family also is upset by the loss of untainted teachers. "They shouldn't all have to pay for the wrongdoing of a few," he says. "There have to be good teachers there." 
 
 He says his family's situation reminds him of a Spanish-language song about illegal immigrants: "The song says being undocumented is living in hell. Now, I know what (the singer) means." 
 
 School officials acknowledge the controversy over throwing out the good with the bad. Tom Waldman, spokesman for the school system, says administrators felt it was "the best thing to do" because of the trauma of the allegations and the disruption that investigations may pose for teachers and students who are still to be questioned. He called it an attempt "to approximate a fresh start.'' 
 
 Investigators are considering whether a "culture of silence," as Deasy put it, may have existed among adults at the school. 
 
 Dan Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, says he's never heard of a mass staff replacement at a school. 
 
 "To pull the plug on an entire school — that's dramatic," Domenech says. He says Deasy may have more information that he can't disclose. 
 
 Ellen Greenwald, a University of Texas-Dallas psychologist, says kids who are victims of sex abuse often fear that going to adults will get them in more trouble and that no one will believe them, or that adults will blame them. 
 
 "That's what really creates the silence that continues," she says. 
 
 Lisa Aronson Fontes, a psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts who wrote Child Abuse and Culture: Working with Diverse Families, says, "There's a culture of silence at most schools … and a culture of disbelief and denial." 
 
 "Families who feel disempowered in a variety of ways are going to have trouble challenging authorities like a teacher," she says. "If they're first-generation immigrants, if their English skills are limited, if they're low-income, they're going to have an even harder time challenging authority." 
 
 She notes that other predators, from a Delaware dentist to mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer, targeted immigrants. "Immigrant children are particularly disempowered," she says. 
 
 At more well-to-do schools, parental involvement could be a check on inappropriate behavior, Escutia says. In the Miramonte neighborhood, parents are often working or simply too shy and unskilled to volunteer at their schools. 
 
 "It would never happen in Malibu," says Escutia, referring to the wealthy beachfront strip of land that is more familiar than inner-city ghettos for most visitors to Southern California. "The moms in Malibu have time to be active in kids' lives at school." ||||| FILE - This image provided by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department shows Martin B. Springer, 49, who was arrested Feb. 3, 2012 in Los Angeles. Prosecutors have filed a lewd-acts complaint against... (Associated Press) 
 
 A teacher charged in a sex abuse scandal that has rocked a Los Angeles elementary school is free on bail. 
 
 The Los Angeles County sheriff's department says Martin Springer was released early Friday. He had been held on $300,000 bail. 
 
 The sheriff's office says he was fitted with an electronic ankle monitor. 
 
 The 49-year-old has pleaded not guilty to committing three lewd acts on one girl in class in 2009. He was arrested last week after two girls said he fondled them, but one has since recanted her allegation. 
 
 Springer's arrest came shortly after another former teacher was charged with 23 counts of lewd acts upon children. Mark Berndt is accused of feeding his semen to some students during "tasting games" in his classroom from 2005 to 2010. 
 
 THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below. 
 
 Some students wrote farewell letters to their former teachers. Even though it was the middle of the school year to them, it was the first day for the new staff of an elementary school where every worker was replaced following the arrests of two longtime teachers on lewdness charges. 
 
 "You had to go because of somebody evil," one first-grader wrote, according to counselor Gina Adelman. Others wrote "you were a good teacher" and "I will miss you." 
 
 Miramonte Elementary School students returned to class for the first time Thursday since the entire 120-member staff was replaced in an unprecedented move by the Los Angeles Unified School District. 
 
 The day got off to a rough start with the teachers union president assailing the reassignment of teachers as a stunt and about 100 parents and students blasting the move. 
 
 United Teachers Los Angeles President Warren Fletcher said teachers were being "tarred and stigmatized for no reason" and that grievances would be filed against the district on behalf of some 85 reassigned teachers. 
 
 "It is crystal clear that LAUSD doesn't have a plan," Fletcher said. "They're making this up as they go along, and students at the school are paying the price." 
 
 Superintendent John Deasy said the makeover was needed to clear the school from a cloud of distrust and suspicion stemming from the arrest of former third-grade teacher Mark Berndt. The 61-year-old has been charged with 23 counts of lewd acts upon children, ages 6 to 10, accused of feeding his semen to some students during "tasting games" in his classroom from 2005 to 2010. 
 
 A second teacher, Martin Springer, 49, was arrested last week after two girls said he had fondled them in class in 2009. Springer pleaded not guilty after he was charged with committing three lewd acts on one girl in 2009. The other girl has since recanted her allegation. 
 
 About 100 parents and children protested with signs saying "Give us our teachers back" and chanting "no new teachers" as TV cameras rolled. 
 
 Parents attended a meeting with the new principal, but many emerged dissatisfied, saying the district went overboard. 
 
 "My son liked his teacher," said Jose Vargas, shaking his head. 
 
 Deasy said replacing the staff, from janitors to principal, was necessary to restore trust among parents in the largely poor, Latino neighborhood of unincorporated Los Angeles County. 
 
 Whether any of the previous staff will return to Miramonte will be determined after the district completes its investigation into how Berndt's alleged activities went undetected for so long, he said. 
 
 The teachers were told via a notice of administrative transfer that on Monday they will report to a nearby unfinished high school, where they will be interviewed while the investigation is ongoing. 
 
 In the classrooms they left behind, children and teachers were adjusting. 
 
 In Martha Cedeno's first-grade class, pupils told her where to find the gym schedule and explained they were to play volleyball, according to a pool report. 
 
 Parents were offered the option of transferring their children to another school. District employees were on hand to give parents information about other schools in a two-mile radius and charter schools. 
 
 Parents said children were confused since they were just getting to know their teachers. 
 
 "It's kind of hard," said Lorena Soriano, whose sixth-grader attends Miramonte. "You barely know your teacher, and they're gone. The kids don't know what's going on." 
 
 The new hires, which include a retired principal, 81 teachers and dozens of support staff, will cost the cash-strapped district $5.7 million, said district spokesman Thomas Waldman. The new staffers were recently laid off and were on a rehiring list. 
 
 The district also faces potentially millions of dollars in legal costs as lawsuits are filed. Three lawsuits were filed on Tuesday, and claim notices have been filed for at least four other lawsuits. 
 
 A number of parents have opted to file lawsuits instead of going to sheriff's detectives because they are illegal immigrants and are afraid they'll be deported. 
 
 Assemblyman Tom Ammiano said he will reintroduce a bill this month that will protect children and domestic violence victims from deportation. 
 
 "What does it say about our society if parents won't speak to the police when their children are in danger?" Ammiano asked. "Enough is enough. Every parent regardless of immigration status deserves access to the police and to know that their children are being protected." 
 
 The lawsuits allege the district and Principal Martin Sandoval failed to adequately safeguard the students against Berndt and Springer. 
 
 The school's reopening follows revelations that 200 more inappropriate photos of children were discovered, and that one teacher sent birthday cards and presents to students who participated in his games. 
 
 Many of the photos involve children already identified by authorities, but there may be other victims, authorities said. 
 
 Like the pictures that first alerted authorities to Berndt, the photos show children ages 6 to 10 blindfolded and being fed a milky, white liquid that authorities believe was semen on spoons or cookies. 
 
 Berndt taught for 32 years at the South Los Angeles school. He remains jailed on $23 million bail and could face life in prison if convicted. 
 
 The furor over his arrest led two parents to come forward last week to complain about Springer, who had worked at the school for 26 years. 
 
 Detectives said there is no evidence that the two men acted in concert.
– A third teacher has been implicated in the burgeoning child sex scandal at Miramonte Elementary School in Los Angeles. A lawyer said two victims were regularly escorted by a female teacher to the classroom of Mark Berndt, 61, who has been charged with 23 counts of lewd conduct, reports the New York Daily News. “I believe she aided and abetted him in carrying out abusive acts. I believe she worked in concert with Mr. Berndt,” said Brian Claypool, who is representing five possible victims in the case. “They had adjoining classrooms, and he’d come in every other day in the middle of the day, and he’d go up to her and whisper in her ear. She’d start giggling and then pick out two pretty girls and walk them over to the door," added Claypool, who did not name the teacher. Miramonte, one of the nation's biggest elementary schools, remains closed today following major protests after the arrest of two teachers charged with sex abuse and the announcement that the entire staff will be replaced. Investigators are also now looking into a "love letter" written by a school aide to an 11-year-old boy describing her "chills" when she was close to him, and telling him to throw the letter away so it wouldn't be found by the boy's brother or mother, reports the Los Angeles Times.