Ex-Fresno Unified janitor not guilty on 4 child molestation charges

A former janitor has been found not guilty of molesting four third-graders at Norseman Elementary School in southeast Fresno.

Benjamin Wong, 54, cried in Fresno County Superior Court when the verdict was announced Friday.

The jury of six men and six women deliberated three days before finding him not guilty of four misdemeanor charges of annoying or molesting children. The jury hung 6-6 on another misdemeanor molestation charge and 7-5 on another charge involving two other students. Because the verdicts on those two counts were not unanimous, prosecutors could retry them.

But Wong’s lawyers doubt they will ever convict him since he had a stellar career for 15 years in the Fresno Unified School District before the six children made the allegations against him.

During his trial, six Norsemen students accused him of stroking their hair in a sexual manner, taking photos of them and touching their private parts.

If convicted, he faced up to six years in jail – one year for each victim.

“Justice has been served,” said Efan Wu, one of Wong’s lawyers.

Wong had worked three years at Norseman before students began complaining about him.

The charges stem from alleged incidents that happened between August 2014 and May 2015. The alleged victims are four girls, including twins, and two boys. (The Bee’s policy is to not name alleged sex abuse victims.)

During the trial, prosecutor Vanessa Wong, who is not related to the defendant, told the jury that Wong “had no business touching those children.” She said he “took away their innocence.”

But attorneys Roberto Dulce and Wu of the Public Defender’s Office said Wong had a stellar record at Ayers and Ewing elementary schools before getting the job at Norseman. No one at Ayers or Ewing ever complained about him, they said.

According to the prosecution, the students, who are now 9 and 10 years old, told the Norseman principal, Kimberly Collins, and Vice Principal Kevin Her and other school staffers about Benjamin Wong. “He was warned to stop, but he continued to do it,” Vanessa Wong told the jury. “His interest in children got the best of him.”

But Wu told the jury that the children gave conflicting accounts to Fresno police detectives about what had happened to them. Wu also said detectives interviewed the twins in the same room so they were able to hear what each of them told the detectives. In addition, a majority of the alleged victims are friends and many of them are in the same classroom, Wu told the jury.

Some of the alleged victims accused Benjamin Wong of taking photographs of them. But he voluntarily turned over his cellphone to police and not one photograph of a Norseman student was found, Wu said.

Wu said some of the evidence also wasn’t physically possible. For example, two alleged victims, who are twins, said they were in a bathroom stall when Benjamin Wong came into the restroom with a mop. One twin said Wong placed the handle of the mop under the stall door and touched her private parts. The other twin gave a similar account, but said Wong touched her private part with the head of the mop.

One of the boys accused Wong of asking him to kiss him. Wu said Wong and the boy were not in the same area or close enough to kiss.

Also improbable, Wu said, is that some of the students accused Wong of stroking their hair or touching their private parts in the school cafeteria in front of large gatherings.

One student even said Wong slapped her cheek, but the school nurse told police she saw no marks on the student, Wu said.

The principal and Her did warn Benjamin Wong one or two times, but that was because he has a habit of invading a person’s personal space, Wu said. But he does that with both adults and children, she said.

If touching occurred, Wu said, Benjamin Wong did it affectionately, like patting a child on the back or tousling a child’s hair. “It was not done in a sexual manner,” she told the jury.

After the verdict was announced, Judge Jonathan Conklin thanked the jury for its “Herculean task” without uttering a single complaint.

Conklin said Wong will remain free on bail until prosecutors decide whether to retry him. Wong will have a status hearing on Monday.

This story was originally published December 16, 2016 at 4:19 PM with the headline "Ex-Fresno Unified janitor not guilty on 4 child molestation charges."