A Cabrillo High School social studies teacher pleaded not guilty in Orange County Superior Court Tuesday to charges that he had sex with a teenage girl multiple times last year before being arrested in January.
John William Gunde, a 46-year-old resident of Long Beach, is facing eight counts of engaging in sex acts with a minor and one count of possession of child pornography, according to court documents. The crimes took place when the girl was 15 and 16 years old between October and December 2020, authorities say.
Buena Park police said they started investigating Gunde in December after he allegedly began talking to the 15-year-old on the dating site Ashely Madison sometime in October before switching to personal emails.
The family of the victim secured a restraining order against Gunde in March, court documents show.
An email conversation included in the restraining order application shows a chain of messages the family alleges the victim exchanged with Gunde’s email “Daddyshome33” on the night of Oct. 17 and early morning hours of Oct. 18. The messages show the user alleged to be Gunde repeatedly asking the girl about her sexual experience, if her emails were being monitored by her parents and what she’d be willing to do with him.
“How ‘far’ would you like it to go?” one message said. “What is popping into your head right now? What ideas of how far? Write them…I’m not in your head…and I’m not there in your bed…you gotta tell me.”
The Daddyshome33 email account and the girl exchanged messages for about four hours, which allegedly ended in Gunde driving to the girl’s Orange County home around 2 a.m. on Oct. 18 to pick her up.
Court documents filed by the girl’s family allege Gunde had sex with her multiple times from Oct. 22 through Dec. 13, including at least one instance where he tied her down to do so. The last of those instances allegedly took place at the Buena Park Inn near the Knott’ Soak City Water Park.
A spokesman for the Long Beach Unified School District said in January that Gunde began working for LBUSD in 1998 at Stephens Middle School and transferred to Cabrillo in 2008. He was placed on administrative leave after his Jan. 6 arrest. On Feb. 3, the school board placed him on unpaid leave indefinitely pending the outcome of his criminal case.
LBUSD disciplinary records obtained by the Post show that Gunde has faced at least one complaint for problematic behavior. In June 2008 when he was working at Stephens, he was reprimanded for an “inappropriate conversation” he had with a parent in which Gunde allegedly yelled at a parent to “get the hell out of my class” during an argument over Gunde taking away a female student’s phone during class.
Gunde has been out on a $100,000 bail since Jan. 19. His next court date is Aug. 24.