A Call to Action Stopping Sexual Abuse by School Employees
when i was a junior professor of
education
a principal came to me and asked for my
help
he said that he thought that one of his
male teachers was having sex with female
students
he wanted to know what he should do
even though i had heard of such a thing
i hadn’t really thought much about it
and
the truth was i had no idea what he
should do
so we looked at the research and didn’t
find a lot to help us and
we talked it through and we worked out a
plan and fast forward
the teacher was arrested was convicted
and went to prison but this incident got
me thinking
and i had some questions my first
question was
does this happen a lot or is it rare
my second question was if it does happen
a lot
why do school employees sexually abuse
students
so those questions prompted me to spend
the next
30 some years studying what i’ve come to
call
school employee sexual misconduct so the
first question does this happen a lot
yes at any one time
10 percent of elementary middle and high
school students are the
target of school employee sexual
misconduct
that’s 5.7
million students at any one time
and as to the second question why do
school employees sexually abuse and
exploit students
i now know the answer to that too
because they can
because they can so that brings me to my
third question
if we know this continues to happen if
we know that
5.7 million students are being targeted
and sexually abused in schools by adults
why haven’t we stopped the sexual abuse
of students by school employees
why haven’t we to answer this question i
analyzed hundreds of cases of school
employee sexual abuse
i was trying to understand how the abuse
happens
and why it isn’t stopped so i’m going to
give you three stories from my research
that really helped to explain why
school employee sexual abuse is still
happening
i’m going to call the first story i
didn’t know what i was seeing
so a popular male teacher romanced a 14
year old student
he sent her notes he took her out he
bought her presents
he told her she was beautiful and smart
and that she was more mature than any of
the other girls
he also told her he was going to marry
her when she graduated from school
she was flattered and smitten
and she told her friends about her
boyfriend the teacher
when this all came out and the teacher
was arrested
this is what people said students said
everybody knows that they were dating
the teacher saw them we saw them
everybody knew that
if teachers aren’t supposed to date
students then why didn’t anybody tell us
we figured if nobody told us there was
something wrong with that
it was okay
colleagues said yeah yeah i saw them
together a lot i
i thought he was using really really bad
judgment
but hey it’s not really any of my
business
or i was very concerned i saw them alone
a lot
in the classroom with the door shut the
lights off and i thought about
reporting but then i thought
well what if i’m wrong and if i’m wrong
i’ll ruin the career of a very good
teacher
so i didn’t report
well predators groom students in front
of everyone
people see things people see boundary
crossings
people seeing grooming behaviors people
see
but maybe they don’t understand what
they’re seeing
or maybe they don’t understand that when
they see these behaviors
this is what they must report
so what i learned is that schools need
to train
staff about appropriate adult-to-student
boundaries
and what grooming behaviors look like
and about bystanders responsibility to
report
when you see boundaries being crossed
when you see grooming happening
they need to know that if an adult who
works at a school is dating a student
you got to report it if an adult who
works at the school
is alone with the same students before
during and after school
time and time again you have to report
it
if an adult who works at the school asks
a student to
send a picture by text or sends a
picture to the student
you have to report it because if you
report it
somebody has to investigate and if they
investigate and there’s nothing going on
then no harm done but if they
investigate and find out that grooming
is going on they intervene and stop
the sexual abuse from happening and if
the sexual abuse is occurring
they stop it
story number two it doesn’t happen here
ann was a single professional mom she
had a
fourth grade child she took him out of
public school enrolled him in a
really tony independent school because
she wanted him to get a better education
and more attention about two months into
the semester
his teacher called and asked her if
it would be okay if he did a little
extra tutoring with her son
he said that her son was really bright
but he thought he was falling behind
maybe because the public school
hadn’t kept up with where the
independent school was but he was happy
to offer a little bit of help
well the mom was grateful first of all
this teacher had won a teacher of the
year award the last year and every
parent wanted their kids in his class
and secondly she was worried about his
his academic progress but more worried
that he didn’t have a positive male role
model in his life
and here was this outstanding teacher
who was going to
offer her child an example
of a good man a helpful man
and he was a helpful man he did tutor
her child he did
help her child learn and he also touched
her child
and he had her child touch him
after the abuse was discovered and the
teacher was arrested
here’s what was said i can’t believe
it’s true i mean
he was an outstanding teacher everybody
knows and and anyway this can’t happen
in our school
well yes it can it can happen in your
school
it happens in all kinds of schools to
all kinds of kids
from all kinds of school employees so it
happens to kids who love school
who come to school every day who exceed
excel who are musicians who are athletes
it happens to kids who hate school who
don’t want to come to school who maybe
not
aren’t do so well in school who are shy
who are extroverts
all kinds of kids it happens to
elementary kids middle school kids and
high school kids
it happens in big schools in little
schools in rural schools and urban
schools
it happens in all kinds of schools it
could be happening in your neighborhood
school
after all only nine percent of students
who have
been targeted by school employees and
sexually abused
report it to anyone what i learned from
this story
is that people feel that it won’t happen
in their school or
their teachers won’t do such a thing or
their school personnel won’t do such a
thing
and so they don’t prepare they don’t
prevent they don’t teach
they just assume it won’t happen it’s a
problem they don’t have to deal with
story three it’s not that bad
so a high school math teacher asked one
of her students
a junior in high school to stay after
class
and she started talking to him and
telling me he was doing a really good
job in class and that she also enjoyed
watching him play football because she
went to all the games
they were talking and she said hey you
want to just grab a cup of coffee
he said sure they went and got a cup of
coffee they talked
fat moved into more coffee dates and
more talking
that moved into riding around in a car
and that moved
to physical sexual contact
when this was disturbed when this was
discovered
here’s what was said hey
it’s not that big of a deal it’s every
male student’s dream to have sex with
his teacher
or he’ll get over it he’s in high school
it’s not that bad
it’s not really that bad well
yes it is it is that bad
because we know that without
interventions without help
child sexual abuse or abuse by someone
in a position of trust
causes harm it causes great harm
the centers for disease control identify
child sexual abuse as a
public health problem that’s public
health problem children who are sexually
abused
often do harm to themselves they’re at
risk for drug and alcohol abuse
they sometimes commit suicide when they
grow up
they have more health problems and they
live shorter lives
than people who were not abused when
they were children
what i learned is adults don’t
understand the magnitude of the harm
that child sexual abuse does we don’t
understand the magnitude
so i’ve given you three reasons about
why we haven’t stopped it
one we don’t know what we’re seeing we
don’t know about boundaries we don’t
know about
red flags we believe it won’t happen in
our school
and we fail to comprehend just how
devastating child sexual abuse is for
the child the child’s family
and for society at large lucky for us
those aren’t such hard problems to fix
first of all we can develop policies and
procedures in school
that make it clear what are acceptable
behaviors
between adults and students and then we
can enforce those policies
secondly we can teach everyone about
grooming about red flags about
bystander behavior and the
responsibility
to say something we can teach
parents we can teach kids and most of
all and most importantly
we can teach every member of the
school’s staff
whether teacher custodian bus driver or
school principal
we can create a culture of if you see
something
say something we can reinforce that
bystanders
have a responsibility to keep their eyes
open
and to report when boundaries are being
crossed
we can educate everybody about how
harmful child sexual abuse is
and why it’s so important to stop it
and we can enforce existing federal laws
laws which are on the books that require
every public school in this country
to have policies for prevention of
adult-to-student
child sexual abuse that require every
public school in this country
to train on prevention train school
staff train parents
train students
we can also do something else
we can stop prioritizing the comfort of
adults
over the safety of children for too long
we’ve left the safety of children
to children we’ve taught them good touch
bad touch and figured the job was done
not only was the job not done it isn’t a
child’s job to stop the sexual abuse of
children
in schools it’s our responsibility
why do school employees sexually abuse
students
because they can it’s
up to us to all of us
to stop it because we
can so they can’t