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Silently Shifting Teachers in Sex
Abuse Cases June 18, 2002
By Diana Jean Schemo
LAS VEGAS — Duane C. Johnson turned
up in southern Nevada nine years ago, a school recruiter's lucky
break. He was a former high school football coach from Utah, game to
work with the most troubled students here in Nevada. When a job
opened at Child Haven, a shelter for neglected children, school
administrators did not hesitate to send him over.
Within a year, however, a
13-year-old girl at Child Haven stepped forward to accuse Mr.
Johnson of repeatedly exposing himself and groping her.
Only then, the local school
administrators said, did they learn what really propelled Mr.
Johnson from his last job in Utah: accusations by school officials
that he had impregnated a student there in her senior year. Although
Mr. Johnson contended that the relationship began three weeks after
the girl graduated from high school in late June, she gave birth to
an eight-pound baby the February after her graduation, and an
inquiry resulted in the loss of Mr. Johnson's Utah teaching license.
"Had I known that, I would never
have moved him to Child Haven," said Matthew Lusk, principal of
schools for Clark County's juvenile courts. "They're the most
vulnerable kids there."
Clark County's experience is hardly
unusual. When teachers are accused of sexual abuse, educators and
law enforcement authorities say, districts often rid themselves of
the problem by agreeing to keep quiet if the teacher moves on,
sometimes even offering them a financial settlement. The practice,
called passing the trash, avoids the difficulties of criminal
prosecution or protracted disciplinary proceedings.
But districts on the receiving end
of such transactions have begun suing the originating districts for
civil damages when the teacher abuses again. So have the victims.
Legislatures are also starting to crack down, mandating fingerprint
and criminal record checks of teachers and protecting employers who
give unfavorable references from lawsuits.
While no central authority tracks
the number of teachers accused of molesting in one jurisdiction who
then pick up teaching in another, Charol Shakeshaft, a professor of
education administration at Hofstra University, studied 225 sexual
abuse complaints against teachers made to federal authorities from
1990 to 1994 and found that in only 1 percent of the cases did
superintendents follow up to ensure that molesting teachers did not
continue teaching elsewhere. In 54 percent, superintendents accepted
the teachers' resignations or retirements. Of the 121 teachers
removed this way, administrators knew for certain that 16 percent
resumed teaching in other districts.
Julie Underwood, general counsel
for the National School Boards Association, acknowledged that
allowing those accused of molestation to leave districts without a
mark on their record was morally questionable. But she said school
principals often did not have the time required to pursue
disciplinary actions.
"It may take an entire week of time
at hearings to dismiss a teacher," Ms. Underwood said.
The receiving states, educators
say, also shoulder some of the responsibility. With nationwide
teacher shortages, states face pressure to provide credentials to
teachers swiftly and may overlook warning signals on employment
records.
That explained, in part, how Mr.
Johnson ended up teaching in Nevada, where he is awaiting trial on
charges of felony lewdness with a minor. He has denied wrongdoing.
The school superintendent in Provo County, Utah, where Mr. Johnson
was previously disciplined, did not respond to a request for
comment.
Whatever measures states are
taking, cases crop up repeatedly around the country. In 1998, the
trade paper Education Week compiled a list of 244 cases involving
accusations of school sexual abuse that were then making their way
through courts and disciplinary hearings. It concluded that teachers
accused in one place were likely to have been accused elsewhere
before.
Educators acknowledge the problem
persists despite recent efforts:
¶In July, Melissa Ann Daw, a high
school teacher in Escambia County, Fla., will go to trial, accused
of lewd conduct with a 15-year-old former student. According to the
Escambia sheriff's office, Ms. Daw drew similar accusations at her
last teaching job, in Mobile, Ala., but left with glowing references
from her former boss. She has denied the accusations.
¶Last year, Steven Nowicki, a
teacher in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., was sentenced to a minimum of 14 years
in prison for molesting two brothers, 8 and 10 years old, in their
home. Mr. Nowicki arrived in New York from a private school in
Connecticut, which had fired him over sexual abuse accusations but
gave him excellent recommendations, said Christopher Meagher, a
lawyer representing the victims' families in civil suits against
both the sending and receiving schools.
¶In February, a fourth-grade
teacher, Jason Abhyankar, 28, was convicted of molesting three boys
9 to 11 years old at two California elementary schools. According to
testimony at his trial, Mr. Abhyankar was fired from his job at the
first school, Huntington Beach Elementary, where he had been accused
of sexual abuse, but he left with a letter of recommendation.
No federal laws bar schools from
permitting teachers accused of sexual misconduct in one jurisdiction
from resuming teaching in another jurisdiction, but in recent years,
state legislatures have moved to address the problem. At least two,
Michigan and California, bar school districts from settling charges
against teachers by promising to keep accusations of abuse secret.
Largely in response to the abuse
problem, 36 states now require teachers to be fingerprinted, though
only half of those demand both state and national criminal record
checks to license or hire teachers. Twenty-three states revoke a
teacher's license automatically for felony convictions involving sex
with children.
As of 1998, at least 26 states had
passed laws explicitly protecting employers who give unfavorable
references from defamation lawsuits. In addition, a national
bulletin board, run by the National Association of State Directors
of Teacher Education and Certification, lists teachers whose
licenses have been revoked or suspended, but reporting is spotty,
said Roy J. Einreinhofer, the association's executive director.
For every loophole for vetting
teachers that states seem to have closed, said Lt. Tom Monahan, the
former head of the Las Vegas Police Department's sex crimes unit,
others go unnoticed. The required background checks typically go
through the Federal Bureau of Investigation, covering felonies, but
sexual abuse charges are often reduced to misdemeanors in plea
bargaining, he said.
Laws mandating that "credible"
accusations must be reported to the police or child welfare
authorities leave leeway for educators to remain silent, allowing
them to claim insufficient proof. In addition, because teachers at
private schools are usually not licensed, credentialed teachers
forced out for sexual misconduct in public schools often migrate to
them, law enforcement officials say.
Dr. Shakeshaft, basing her figures
on an analysis of nine independent studies, estimates that 15
percent of the country's 50 million schoolchildren will be sexually
abused by a teacher or other school employee. Only 7 percent of
abused students, she said, report what happened. Terri Miller,
president of Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct and Exploitation,
a nonprofit group based in Nevada, said victims felt doubly betrayed
when their molester was allowed to move on unpunished.
Employers also refrain from giving
negative references out of fear that teachers will sue for
defamation. They contend that unless charges are proved, it is
unfair to deprive a teacher of future employment. Though generally
unsuccessful, defamation suits are regularly "used as a threat" by
teachers accused of abuse, Ms. Underwood said. Still, in recent
years, school districts that free molesters have faced a
countervailing threat of lawsuits by later victims and the districts
that the molesters have moved to.
In California, a 13-year-old
student accused her school's vice principal of abuse and
successfully sued both his current and former school districts. In a
1997 ruling on that case, the California Supreme Court said that
former employers must disclose information that is "potentially
relevant to the employee's fitness to perform the subsequent job."
If Duane Johnson's hiring here
showed less than full disclosure on the part of school officials in
Provo County, state officials here have acknowledged that it also
revealed carelessness on Nevada's part.
Mr. Johnson arrived in Nevada with
strong letters of recommendation from his last job. He acknowledged
that his Utah teaching license had been revoked but said he was
challenging the action. Nevada officials did not investigate.
In 1999, the head of Nevada's
teacher licensing authority learned about the sexual misconduct
accusation in Utah and tried to revoke the Nevada license. But the
state attorney general here stopped the effort, citing insufficient
legal grounds, since the Department of Education had known that the
Utah license had been revoked.
One point, however, was never in
dispute. Whatever Nevada's teacher credentialing office knew about
Mr. Johnson's record, its officials never told those in Clark
County, who hired Mr. Johnson. Dr. Lusk said Clark officials called
Mr. Johnson's last school in Utah and were told only good things
about him. The disclosure of his past, in news accounts after his
arrest, outraged school officials in Clark and prompted them to
draft new, tougher questions for checking references, said Lina
Gutierrez, the school district's executive director of license
personnel.
Oddly enough, Mr. Johnson's reason
for leaving Provo City High School in Utah was amply covered in the
local news in the early 1990's. His previous employer would have
faced no liability in disclosing the accusation.
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