A Bay Area Teacher Was Acquitted of Sexual Abuse. He’s on Trial Again for New Allegations
Editor’s Note: This story includes details of alleged sexual misconduct against minors.
For the second time in his teaching career, a former Bay Area elementary teacher is on trial over allegations that he sexually abused his students.
Matthew Shelton, 44, faces 12 felony counts of lewd acts on four children during his tenure at the Benicia Unified School District. Prosecutors say the alleged abuse took place between 2018 and 2022 at Robert Semple Elementary School, where he was a fifth-grade teacher, and during a field trip with students in Oakland.
But the trial is also putting a spotlight on Shelton’s tumultuous first year teaching in 2007, when students at Phillips Edison Elementary School in Napa accused him of similar allegations. And it comes as Benicia Unified faces three lawsuits from students who allege the district failed to protect them by hiring Shelton, despite the abuse allegations in Napa.
Shelton, then 25 years old, was a popular third-grade teacher at the Napa school when he was accused of inappropriately touching four students. He was criminally charged, and three students testified against him during a six-day trial in 2008. Jurors deliberated for just 20 minutes before finding him not guilty. Benicia Unified hired him six months later.
During opening statements at a Fairfield courthouse on Monday, prosecutor Barry Shapiro argued that Shelton’s pattern of abuse continued at his new school. He told the jury that Shelton went on to touch Benicia elementary students on the buttocks or vaginal area, and that he had a student touch his penis, just as the students in Napa alleged nearly two decades ago.
Shapiro said adults trust teachers to keep their children safe.
“This case is about a teacher who violated that trust consistently over the span of 15 years at two schools in multiple grades,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro painted Shelton as a sophisticated actor who had both the “knowledge and opportunity” to isolate girls and get away with the abuse, even in a classroom with other students present. Shelton instructed his Benicia students to applaud when adults entered his classroom, Shapiro said.
But one day in December 2022, Shapiro said the students were distracted and failed to clap. A teacher walked in and saw Shelton by his desk, holding hands with another student and “swaying back and forth.” The next day, several students complained to Principal Christina Moore that he made them uncomfortable by placing his hands on a classmate’s thigh, pinching a student’s arm, and moving his hand down to the pockets of a student’s pants.
Moore contacted the school’s resource officer and Benicia Unified put Shelton on leave. Months later students disclosed more serious allegations to Benicia police.
Defense attorney Amanda Bevins denies any sexual motivation on Shelton’s part. She described him as a husband, father and dedicated educator who devoted his entire career to teaching, even after being wrongfully accused nearly two decades prior.
Bevins said that in the 2007 case, a group of disgruntled friends made allegations against Shelton to their principal. Flash forward to 2022, she said another friend group at Robert Semple Elementary School — upset that Shelton singled out one of the girls and made her cry — complained to their principal about Shelton. Nearly two decades apart, the two friend groups both concocted claims against him, she said.
Bevins asked the jury to pay attention to how the allegations changed over time and were influenced by schoolyard gossip, employee break room chatter, media coverage, repeated interviews by police and lawyers and civil lawsuits.
“The seriousness of the accusations does not tell us whether they are true,” Bevins said.
She said Shelton was acquitted in Napa and he did not abuse his students in Benicia. “Nothing plus nothing is nothing,” Bevins said.
‘I didn’t deserve that’
But details of Shelton’s short tenure teaching in Napa continue to reverberate in this trial. Former students who testified against Shelton in 2008, his former Napa teaching colleagues, and the detective who investigated the case were on a recent list of potential witnesses.
After opening statements, one of the students who testified against Shelton during the Napa trial, now in her late 20s, took the stand again to face her former social studies teacher. She told the jury that in 2007, she saw Shelton touch one of her classmates on the crotch and another on the butt during class. KQED does not generally name victims of alleged abuse without their consent.
With her voice occasionally breaking, she testified that Shelton had also touched her butt after she went to his desk to ask a question.
“I was extremely shocked. I was confused. I wasn’t sure whether or not it was OK,” the former student said. “I had never been touched like that before.”
Another alleged victim in the Napa case told KQED in a recent interview that Shelton was well-liked and touched students by playing games with them, picking girls up and pretending to be Superman.
When she was interviewed by police in 2007, the student alleged that Shelton moved her hands across her “private spot” or made her touch his groin.
But she said the same educators who comforted her, hugged her and told her she was safe later defended Shelton during the trial, testifying that the girls who accused him were lying.
When it was her turn to testify, she recalled sweating and shaking “not realizing the trauma that was coming up then.”
She said she was just a kid holding a teddy bear in a courtroom filled with adults, including Shelton. She became confused by the attorney’s deluge of questions.
“It was all basically to prove that I was wrong,” she said.
She said she can still remember the expression on Shelton’s face.
“The smirk,” the former student said. “He was getting satisfaction from us getting confused.”
After Shelton was acquitted in 2008, the state’s teacher licensing agency reviewed the allegations against him in Napa to determine whether he should be allowed to continue working in California public schools, according to records from Napa Valley Unified. In addition to the criminal case, the agency also reviewed allegations from other students who said Shelton touched them on the stomach, rubbed their fingers and patted girls’ heads “like a dog.”
Nine people provided “very favorable” letters on Shelton’s behalf, including his defense attorney, former assistant principal and other third grade teachers, according to the agency’s investigative report. A teacher said one of the alleged victims “does a lot of lying” and that Shelton is “very kind-hearted.”
At the time, Shelton cited as evidence an evaluation from a psychologist who said: “This young man very clearly does not exhibit those personality traits or demographic factors that empirical research has shown to be present in most child molesters.”
Shelton told the teacher licensing agency he was looking forward to continuing his career as an educator. His credential was reinstated in 2008, and months later Benicia Unified hired him.
A parent of one of the alleged victims in Benicia told KQED that it was “disgusting” that the state gave Shelton back his teaching credential. KQED is not naming the parent to protect the identity of her daughter.
“Why are we hiring people that have those types of allegations?” the mother said. “He needs to be away from kids.”
She said her daughter, now a teenager, is still afraid of being taught by male teachers because of what happened to her. “There were plenty of times over the last three years where she has broken down, cried and said, ‘I didn’t deserve that.’”
Benicia Unified Superintendent Chris Calabrese declined to comment on Shelton’s hiring. Shelton resigned from Benicia Unified in 2023 after allegations surfaced that he touched students inappropriately. He was subsequently hired by the West Contra Costa Unified School District as an assistant principal. The district put him on leave when a parent of one of the victims informed the district he was under investigation by police.
A spokesperson for West Contra Costa Unified said in a written statement that his credentials were valid when they hired him.
Shelton sued Napa Valley Unified and Benicia Unified in 2024 to stop the districts from releasing records of complaints against him, arguing doing so would impede his right to an impartial jury. The First Amendment Coalition intervened on behalf of this reporter and both districts released the records.
Since 2025, California law has required all public schools to check with every previous employing school to see if prospective teaching candidates had ever been reported to the state for credible or substantiated complaints of egregious misconduct.
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law this month, prompted by reporting by KQED and ProPublica, clarifying that the teacher licensing agency may discipline educators who do not share their full employment histories and administrators who do not thoroughly vet applicants.