Sexual Misconduct Plagues US Schools

The young teacher hung his head, avoiding eye contact. Yes, he had touched a fifth-grader’s breast during recess. “I guess it was just lust of the flesh,” he told his boss.

That got Gary C. Lindsey fired from his first teaching job in Oelwein, Iowa. But it didn’t end his career. He taught for decades in Illinois and Iowa, fending off at least a half-dozen more abuse accusations.

When he finally surrendered his teaching license in 2004 - 40 years after that first little girl came forward - it wasn’t a principal or a state agency that ended his career. It was one persistent victim and her parents.

Lindsey’s case is just a small example of a widespread problem in American schools: sexual misconduct by the very teachers who are supposed to be nurturing the nation’s children. [snip]

An Associated Press investigation found more than 2,500 cases over five years in which educators were punished for actions from bizarre to sadistic.

There are 3 million public school teachers nationwide, most devoted to their work. Yet the number of abusive educators - nearly three for every school day - speaks to a much larger problem in a system that is stacked against victims. [snip]

Vermont has this problem just as other states do. All of the possible mixes have occurred.

According to this article, that’s slightly more than 500 a year. Called improper contact (don’t you love how correct that sounds) by “the wish to not offend” liberal structure, none of the actual deeds have reality. No molestation, sodomy, rape, or abuse takes place, just improper contact.

As one may see after reading the text, the victims’ anxiety, terror or self-deprecation is thrust aside when the professional is a well liked member of the faculty or staff.

Heather Kline was 12, a girl with a broad smile and blond hair pulled back tight. Teacher Troy Mansfield had cultivated her since she was in his third-grade class.

“Kids, like, idolized me because they thought I was, like, cool because he paid more attention to me,” says Kline, now 18, sitting at her mother’s kitchen table, sorting through a file of old poems and cards from Mansfield. “I was just like really comfortable. I could tell him anything.”

He never pushed her, just raised the stakes, bit by bit - a comment about how good she looked, a gift, a hug. She was sure she was in love.

By winter of seventh grade, he was sneaking her off in his car for an hour of sex, dropping in on her weekly baby-sitting duties, e-mailing about what clothes she should wear, about his sexual fantasies, about marriage and children.

Mansfield finally got caught by the girl’s mother, and his own words convicted him. [snip]

Victims also face consequences when teachers are punished.

In Pennsylvania, after news of teacher Troy Mansfield’s arrest hit, girls called Kline, his 12-year-old victim, a “slut” to her face. A teacher called her a “vixen.” Friends stopped talking to her. Kids no longer sat with her at lunch.
Her abuser, meanwhile, had been a popular teacher and football coach.

So, between rumors that she was pregnant or doing drugs and her own panic attacks and depression, Kline bounced between schools. At 16, she ran away to Nashville.

“I didn’t have my childhood,” says Kline, who’s back home now, working at a grocery cash register and hoping to get her GED so she can go to nursing school. “He had me so matured at so young.

Today’s parents have so much to do; there is no time to go with the kids. So drop them off at the mall, let them pal around with no one to say no. From nannies to au pairs, then the latchkey life with the computer as a companion, MySpace and Face Book giving guidance. For the parents, a social calamity is missing a nail appointment. Worse yet is missing a spinning class or being late for the Latte Club sip off.

When something untoward occurs, the powers wring hands and let us know how terrible the occurrence weighs on society. “Get them therapy” so they avoid depression, call in the grief counselors; show great liberal concern, all after the fact.

Providing a little bit of caring before the attack, may forestall the need for a youngster to look for approval in unsafe ways, from persons a child believes they can trust.

Perhaps Justice Ruth Ginsburg has the answer. She likes the answer found in Danish law; children at age twelve reach majority for all purposes except for contractual obligations.

Very liberal, it removes the criminal sanction; hey kids, no guilt and repercussions, act as you like.

This is how our justices think? Cashman up here did.

Archived in: Iowa, Pennsylvania, Vermont