Orange County piano teacher sentenced to 100 years to life for molesting eight girls during their lessons
An Orange County piano teacher has been sentenced to 100 years to life in prison after being convicted of molesting eight girls and taking pornographic images of many of them during their lessons.
John Mordecai Scott VI, 65, was sentenced Friday after five of the girls he was convicted of molesting provided impact statements. Scott was convicted on March 14 of molesting eight girls during the nearly two decades he worked as a piano teacher at Music Maker Piano Studio in Rancho Santa Margarita, Coast Band Music in Mission Viejo, and at his Lake Forest home.
"The trauma these young girls were forced to endure by someone they should have been able to trust is unforgivable," Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement. ""Pedophiles will not stop victimizing innocent children until they are removed from society. No child and no parent should have to suffer what these victims have suffered."
Prosecutors say Scott began molesting girls starting in 1996 during their music lessons by groping their breasts and instructing some of them to spread their legs rhythmically as if it were part of their music instruction. Scott showed several of the girls pornography and photographed one of the girls in pornographic poses, including in lingerie, according to prosecutors, and claimed to be a doctor while molesting another student.
Scott's home was searched in 2014 after a 10-year-old student reported he took inappropriate photos of her while she took lessons at his Lake Forest home, where he also showed her pornography and filmed her.
He was ultimately convicted of 13 felony counts of lewd and lascivious acts with a minor, five felony counts of a lewd act upon a child age 14 or 15, and a felony count each of use of an underage person for obscene matter, possession of child pornography, exhibition of lewd material to a minor, distributing pornography to a minor with the intent to engage in sexual conduct, and a misdemeanor count of annoying or molesting a child under 18.
