A former Sacramento elementary school teacher used his position as head of the campus broadcast club to groom numerous students and film himself sexually assaulting them in the club’s private room for years, authorities said.
Now he may spend the rest of his life behind bars.
On Friday, 64-year-old Kim Kenneth Wilson was sentenced to 215 years to life after pleading guilty to nine felony counts of committing lewd acts upon a child, according to the Sacramento County district attorney’s office. He will become eligible for elder parole in 17 years, prosecutors said.
Wilson was a longtime teacher at Del Paso Heights Elementary School where he founded the broadcasting club, which had its own windowless, soundproof room. This is where most of his crimes took place, prosecutors said.
After taking children to the room, he would commit sex acts on them — often recording or photographing them. He sometimes forced students to look into the camera while saying and depicting sexual acts, prosecutors said.
He also sexually assaulted some young victims while hosting events at his home, according to authorities.
When Sacramento police searched his home they made several alarming discoveries — child-sized artificial genitalia, a child-sized torso with artificial genitalia and a vast trove of recordings depicting Wilson assaulting children who had been entrusted to his care, prosecutors said.
Read more: California ‘teacher of the year’ sexually assaulted elementary school boys. She gets 30-year term
The Twin Rivers School District did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Wilson Friday.
Wilson and the Twin Rivers Unified School District are also involved in two civil lawsuits related to student abuse, one of which was settled earlier this month for $6 million, according to the Sacramento Bee.
That complaint, filed in January 2023, alleges Wilson used his position of authority to groom and sexually abuse a female sixth grader on school grounds during the 2014-15 school year.
“Wilson isolated plaintiff in his classroom behind a closed and/or locked door and/or in a locked, windowless, padded silent room within his classroom where he proceeded to take photographs of her, touch her breasts, kiss her, penetrate her vagina with his hands and fingers and force her to orally copulate him,” the complaint alleges.
According to the complaint, the girl suffered bodily injuries and shock to her nervous system, which continue to cause her mental and physical pain. It further alleges that the district failed to supervisor Wilson’s behavior, allowing his misconduct to continue for years.
A second civil case, filed in June 2023, outlines a similar history of alleged abuse — this time of a 7-year-old female student during the 2013-14 school year.
Wilson routinely pulled her into the broadcast room during her regular class periods and recess periods and took photographs of the second-grader’s genitalia, the complaint alleges. On at least one occasion he directed her to hold a sausage in her mouth while he took photographs of her from multiple angles, the complaint alleges.
The complaint alleges that the school district knew, or should have known, about Wilson’s sexual abuse of multiple young students and failed to protect their safety. The case remains open in Sacramento County Superior Court.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
