Facing two felony charges, former Pepperdine faculty member Dr. Andrei Duta appeared in court yesterday for a preliminary hearing. Charged with kidnapping and assault with a deadly
weapon, Duta pled not guilty prior to his appearance at the West District Airport Courthouse in Los Angeles.
The charges date back to June 24, when at 1:47 a.m., the Santa Monica Police Department (SMPD) responded to a 911 call from the victim, a woman, regarding an incident of domestic violence, according to an SMPD report. Duta’s involvement with Pepperdine began in 2007 when he was hired initially by the Business Division of Seaver College. Since that time, he has also held a position in the Palmer Center at the School of Law and served as a volunteer assistant cross-country coach.
Duta, 38, has also been actively involved with aiding orphanages in his native Romania, including organizing mission trips for Pepperdine students. At Wednesday’s hearing, Detective Duane Hicks, an 18-year veteran of the SMPD, took the stand. According to Hicks’ testimony, the victim, also a Pepperdine employee, reported that she and the suspect, Duta, became tangled in an increasingly heated verbal argument around 8 p.m. on June 23. The victim then left the apartment and returned about 10 minutes later at Duta’s request.
According to Hicks, Duta was playing chess on a laptop computer and did not acknowledge the victim when she returned. Allegedly, she then threw the laptop on the ground and asserted that the two needed to talk. The altercation became physical when Duta, in turn, jumped up, grabbed the woman by her hair and dragged her through the apartment toward the bathroom, threatening her and attempting to stifle her screams along the way.
Hicks said the victim resisted by biting Duta’s chest, after which he demanded she bring him rubbing alcohol to clean the wound. But when she refused, he poured the rubbing alcohol over her head and knocked her down. The victim swallowed some rubbing alcohol. When the struggle momentarily
calmed, the two talked in the living room and the victim suggested Duta leave. Hicks testified that
she then retrieved a butcher knife from the kitchen, but quickly returned it out of fear after Duta refused to leave. Duta eventually knocked the victim to the floor, covered her mouth and began to choke her.
Throughout the ordeal, Duta continually muffled the victim’s cries. After biting his hand, she managed to escape to a neighbor’s apartment and call the police, six hours after the incident began. Officers placed Duta under arrest while still in the victim’s apartment, according to the SMPD report. After being taken into custody, Duta was booked for kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon, and his bail was set at $100,000. Bail was posted and Duta was released shortly after — from jail and Pepperdine. In 2007 Duta joined the Seaver Business Division as an assistant professor of Organizational Behavior and Management.
After reportedly receiving mixed reviews in his three-year evaluation, an assessment that provides guidance and feedback for tenure-track professors, he opted to leave Seaver and take the position of Entrepreneur-in-Residence and director of microfinance at the Palmer Center for Entrepreneurship. In spite of mixed reviews, the Romanian-born professor’s philanthropic efforts have been well known to the Pepperdine community.
Upon graduating from Abilene Christian University in West Texas, Duta and a group of friends started an adoption agency in Abilene. After Romania, a nation formerly under Soviet control, banned international adoptions in 2001, Duta has said he felt moved to help in his home country. Also in 2001, he founded a nonprofit group of orphanages, “His Little Ones,” to support Romanian youth in and around Bucharest. He has been actively involved with it since. With such a philanthropic attachment to Duta’s name, his charges of kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon this summer were surprising to some in the Pepperdine community. Dr. Keith Whitney, chair of the Business Division at the time of Duta’s hiring, said he was saddened by the gravity of the situation.
“As a former attorney, I certainly realize that Dr. Duta is the accused facing trial, but whatever the situation proves to be, we are saddened when the lives of former colleagues take such a serious
turn in the wrong direction,” Whitney said. “We hired a young professor whose involvement with ‘His Little Ones’ was anticipated to be an inspiration. I pray that Andrei somehow finds his way to what
I also pray is his heart’s true home.”
Public Relations as well as administrators from Seaver and the School of Law all declined to comment.
Currently residing and working in Austin, Texas, Duta has vacated his Malibu residence on Mariposa
Circle and has been taking anger management classes. His arraignment is scheduled for Nov. 30.
