UPDATED: Former Student Describes Sex Acts in the Classroom in Rack Trial

Originally posted at 1:12 p.m. Aug. 21, 2013. Updated to include testimony given after lunch, which included more sexually explicit charges against former teacher Richard Rack.

A recent high school graduate said she had sexual contact with a former math teacher both in and out of his Shorecliffs Middle School classroom when she was in eighth grade.

Richard Rack was not her teacher at the time, student No. 3 said (Patch is referring to the alleged victims by number). She took algebra with another teacher, but midway through the year, she started seeing Rack for tutoring.

It was the third day of testimony in the trial against Rack, who is charged with six felony counts of lewd acts on a child ages 14 or 15, one felony count of lewd or lascivious acts with a minor under 14, and one felony count of oral copulation of a minor under 16. 

Somewhere along a series of tutoring sessions, the relationship became physical, student No. 3 said. It started with hand-holding, hugs and kisses. It escalated to her touching his penis and him touching her buttocks and breasts in the classroom.

While Rack never ejaculated in the classroom, student No. 3 saw him with erections at least 50 times, she testified. She touched his penis in the classroom as many as 20 times, she said.

The relationship went even further when he came to tutor her in her San Juan Capistrano home. He would visit when no one else was home, student No. 3 said. In the laundry room, he would touch her genitals both above and beneath her clothes, and she him.

The student said she manually stimulated him to ejaculation at her house, and also performed oral sex on him two or three times.

The oral copulation was his idea. She told him she had never done it before.

"While it was happening he guided me through it. His hand was on the back of my head," she said.

Student No. 3 was a reluctant witness. She said she tried to hide her relationship with Rack, which extended into the summer and even her freshman year at high school. Her conversation with an Orange County Sheriff’s investigator in June of last year – who found her after Rack’s initial arrest because of sexually suggestive texts on his phone – was her first to acknowledge it to anyone.

While the physical relationship stopped in the student's freshman year, the two maintained a flirtatious rapport and texted constantly. Some of those texts guided each other through masturbation. The student had set up a password-protected account where Rack could view suggestive photos of her.

The relationship continued up into the point he was taken into custody. Outside of the jury's view, Rack comes in each morning in handcuffs. His once dyed blond hair is now naturally gray. 

Before student No. 3 testified, two other former students took the stand to report incidents where Rack held their hands and made comments about their physical appearance.

One said Rack would pass her notes often in class. She once went up to ask a math question, and Rack responded: “How can I focus when your breasts are staring at me.” He kissed her five times, she said.

She said she didn’t consider it inappropriate at the time, but in high school, she realized it was. She’s now 18.

Another student, now 15, said Rack once asked, via a piece of paper, how comfortable she felt with him on a scale of 1 to 10.

“I wrote a 15,” she said.

The response was followed by a compliment to her.

“He said I was pretty and that I had a perfect figure,” she testified.

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