A 29-year-old Perris High School math teacher accused of sexually assaulting a boy on multiple occasions made his initial court appearance Tuesday.
Gerardo Curiel Regalado of Perris, who was arrested Thursday following a Riverside County sheriff’s investigation that began last month, is charged with five counts of sodomy of a child under 16 years old, along with one count each of statutory rape, supplying pornography to a minor and annoying a child.
The defendant appeared before Superior Court Judge David Gunn, who appointed him an attorney and scheduled his arraignment for March 1 at the Riverside Hall of Justice.
Regalado is being held in lieu of $1 million bail at the Byrd Detention Center in Murrieta.
According to sheriff’s Sgt. John Burke, deputies were notified near the end of January of alleged inappropriate contact between the defendant and the victim, identified in court documents only as “John Doe,” beginning in 2013.
Burke said that, at the time, Regalado was working as a tutor and varsity volleyball coach for both the boys and girls teams at Perris High.
According to court records, the alleged illicit sex acts occurred mostly in 2015, both in Perris and Lake Elsinore. The circumstances were not disclosed.
Prosecutors allege there was a second unnamed youth on whom the defendant additionally focused his attention, but no sexual abuse is alleged, only harassment.
Soon after the sheriff’s investigation got underway, Regalado was suspended from his position as a math instructor, a job into which he had been placed in August 2019, according to the Perris Union High School District.
Officials said shortly before he was taken into custody, the defendant voluntarily resigned.
He has no documented prior felony convictions in Riverside County.