Former Middletown High soccer coach and teacher serves jail time for victimizing students
- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — A former Middletown High School soccer coach and science teacher has been convicted of felony stalking and misdemeanor annoying or molesting a child for his treatment of students in a case that occurred two years ago.
The District Attorney’s Office originally charged Michael Antonio Dodd, 31, with 14 counts involving nine juvenile victims, both males and females, in the case, which originated in the summer of 2021 while Dodd was a Middletown Unified School District employee.
Had Dodd gone to trial, he would have faced one count of felony stalking, two counts of felony lewd and lascivious acts with a minor, eight misdemeanor counts of annoying or molesting a minor, and three counts of misdemeanor simple battery, which is harmful or offensive touching.
He was held for trial following a January preliminary hearing, but in the spring Dodd reached a plea agreement with the District Attorney’s Office.
Dodd’s plea agreement called for him to be sentenced for felony stalking and two counts of misdemeanor annoying or molesting a child.
As a result, on June 5 Judge Andrew Blum sentenced Dood to two years probation, up to 120 days in the Lake County Jail and a requirement to register as a tier one sex offender, for which registration lasts for 10 years.
Judge Blum remanded Dodd into sentencing following the June 5 sentencing hearing. By this week, Dodd already had been released from the Lake County Jail due to half-time credits.
From June to September 2021, the time frame covered by the District Attorney’s Office’s charging document, Dodd — who came from out of the area — worked as a science teacher and boys soccer coach at Middletown High School.
The first day of school that year was Aug. 16. On Sept. 14, the Lake County Sheriff’s Ofifce received a report from a school staffer about Dodd’s inappropriate communications with a female student.
Three days later, on Sept. 17, 2021, Middletown Unified gave Dodd a letter of release, terminating him from his job based on the school’s own investigation into the allegations.
Initially, the sheriff’s investigation focused on one female juvenile victim, eventually increasing to a total of nine victims.
Deputy District Attorney Rich Watson said in a Friday interview that he charged the case very thoroughly and interviewed 20 students about Dodd’s behavior, which included touching and rubbing their shoulders, speaking to them inappropriately with sexual undertones, antagonizing them, gawking at them and being “just creepy.”
Dodd would call girls out of class to come to his classroom, where he would have them sit next to his desk and would rub their shoulders, Watson said.
The main victim was a teen girl who was the focus of Dodd’s attention, one he was grooming and with whom he had tried to have a relationship, but she stopped it. Watson said it was at that point that Dodd threatened the girl.
“He’s a felon now and a sex offener because of the totality” of his behavior, Watson said of Dodd.
Watson said he never would have considered allowing probation or dropping some of the more severe charges had he been able to prove that Dodd had done more than just touching the students’ shoulders. That’s why the lewd and lascivious charges were dismissed. Watson also noted that Dodd had no previous criminal history.
Before reaching the settlement agreement, Watson said he also spoke to the victims’ parents, making clear the plea agreement would accomplish goals including keeping Dodd away from children.
Watson credited the children involved for taking a stand against Dodd’s behavior, and the school district for acting swiftly to investigate and terminate him within 30 days of the start of school.
Hearing from victims
Due to schedule conflicts and to being called to serve on a jury in another case prosecuted by Watson at the same time as the Dodd case was coming to resolution, this reporter was unable to attend the Dodd sentencing or to speak to Watson about it in the weeks immediately afterward.
In order to report on the case’s outcome and the complete testimony from victims and their families, Lake County News requested the court reporter’s transcript of Dodd’s sentencing hearing. The publication received that document in mid-July.
During the June 5 sentencing, the grandmother of Dodd’s main victim said Dodd befriended high school girls and was even coming to her house to see her granddaughter.
Another time, when she was at the park, the woman said Dodd showed up with his dog and began telling her he was in love with her granddaughter. She said he held his head and told her “there’s all these demons in his head and that he doesn’t know what he’s going to do.” He also told her that with the demons going on in his head, “it’s kind of like I’m a pedophile.”
Dodd told the woman that he was filing divorce papers on his wife and that as soon as her granddaughter turned 18, “he was coming to our house and he was taking her. And then he said, ‘Or what are you going to do? Stop me with a shotgun?’”
The woman believed Dodd was capable of rape and murder, and told the court he had been following her granddaughter at school to try to get her to come to his classroom and do papers with him.
She warned the court that he is vindictive, that he had been driving by their home and that they had to put up cameras. “It’s awful. And nobody should have to go through this.”
Her granddaughter also spoke to the court. “I just want to say that I’m glad I spoke up along with the other kids so no one else has to go through this. I’m sorry,” the young woman said.
“It ruined so many of our senior and junior years to have to go through this, to the point where most of us can’t even walk into the classrooms that he was in, to where I feared for my safety going to school, to where I couldn’t see a truck that he drove without having a panic attack, to where most of these girls can’t even go play a sport that they love because he’s ruined it for so many of us,” she said.
She added, “It’s sad to say that people like this are in the world that we trusted as a teacher, a coach, and a role model, someone we’re supposed to look up to and go to to confide in things as a school. We can’t even do that.”
The victim said he had even threatened to drop her grades and fail her in class.
Another young woman who spoke to the court recounted how Dodd pulled her into a classroom to pour out his feelings to her about the main victim, offering to pay her $50 and buy her breakfast and coffee if she would go to the victim to ask how she felt about Dodd.
“He kept begging me to ask her, begging me. And I just — I didn’t know what to say. I was uncomfortable, and I’m still, you know, like shaky and disgusted by it. I feel as if I could have been the next victim,” she said.
That young woman told the court that Dodd had come to her home one night to speak to her about his plans to divorce his wife and his feelings about the victim while her mother was recording the encounter on their doorbell camera.
As soon as Dodd left, “that’s when I sat down and I cried and I told my mom everything about what happened and was going on,” she said.
During the June 5 hearing, Dodd’s defense attorney, Chance Oberstein of Laguna Niguel, said Dodd has a mental illness, that he went through a manic episode — his first — during the time period of the case and that he’s been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
Watson told the court that the District Attorney’s Office entered into the agreement after having discussed it with the victims, and noted the agreement’s goals included that Dodd would be a convicted felon, that he would plead to felony stalking and be a registered sex offender.
“We spoke to 20 children to determine the severity of Mr. Dodd’s behavior and if it had been any more severe than what we had before us, there’s no way we would agree to probation. But we talked to all of those children. We talked to most of their parents, and they’re all in agreement, as far as my knowledge is, with who I spoke to, that our goals that we’ve set for these kids and to punish Mr. Dodd have been achieved,” Watson said.
He said the case was handled swiftly both by the children Dodd victimized and by the school district. “And I do feel that the negotiated disposition is appropriate because it was handled so swiftly and his access to the kids was ended.”
In his arguments, Oberstein told the court that Dodd is on medication that as of April had pulled him out of mania, led to him being more emotionally stable, and “he is making and maintaining great gains in functioning.”
Oberstein said Dodd’s doctor asked for him to be allowed alternative sentencing because incarceration “would surely be a huge setback with regard to his progress in treatment.” He also asked for Dodd to get community service as an alternative to jail time.
During sentencing, Judge Blum emphasized that there was no sexual contact between Dodd and the minor victims, otherwise, probation would have been out of the question.
Blum said Dodd cannot be a schoolteacher again, or work or volunteer in any capacity that caters to minors, and that he must enroll in and complete an approved sex treatment program.
Watson also asked for, and received, a no-contact order barring Dodd from interactions with the four main victims. After the hearing, Dodd was immediately taken into custody.
Dodd received four months in jail at half time, “And there is nothing I can do about that,” Watson said Friday.
Lauren Berlinn, spokesperson for the Lake County Sheriff’s Office, told Lake County News that Dodd was released from the Lake County Jail on Thursday, Aug. 3. Berlinn said he was given 61 days of half-time credit and one day of credit from the courts for time previously served.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.