www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall GAO finds registered sex offenders finding jobs in schools

For some time there has been a tendency to 'pile on' the church, be it the Catholic or the Orthodox Church, in the matter of the clergy, episcopacy and sex offenders.

Some of us have posted in defense of the Church - not in defense of the stupid actions of some administrators and the people they protect - by pointing out that these issues are not unique to the Church or the clergy. There is an article in this morning's USA Today entitled "GAO: Registered sex offenders finding jobs in schools." It is worth reading as it supports the argument of those of us who have tried to put the role of the Church in perspective.

The GAO (Government Accountability Office, the independent investigative arm of the United States Congress) issued a report which found, in part:

"Registered sex offenders are getting jobs in schools as teachers, administrators, volunteers and contractors, despite state laws that prohibit them from contact with children, a government watchdog report says.
And school officials in some states enable misconduct to continue by ignoring red flags during hiring or by covering up the firing of sexual offenders, according to the report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.....
An Education Department study estimates that millions of kids in kindergarten through 12th grade are victims of sexual misconduct by a school employee at some point. The GAO report also notes most sexual abuse of children goes unreported. In one study it cites, 232 child molesters admitted to molesting a total of 17,000 victims, often without ever being caught.

How offenders slipped through the cracks:

• A teacher/coach who was forced to resign from an Ohio school because of inappropriate contact with girls was hired by a neighboring district, where he was eventually convicted for sexual battery against a sixth-grade girl. The superintendent at his first school had called him an "outstanding teacher" in a recommendation letter.

• Several Louisiana schools hired a registered sex offender, whose Texas teaching certificate had been revoked, without doing a criminal history check. A warrant is out for his arrest on charges of engaging in sexual conversations with a student at one school.

• An Arizona public school skipped the required criminal history check even though the applicant disclosed he had committed a dangerous crime against a child. He was later convicted for having sexual contact with a girl.

• In three cases, schools failed to ask about troubling application responses. For example, a California charter school hired an administrator who had left blank a question about previous felony convictions; he had been convicted of a felony sex offense against a minor."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-12-15-gao-sex-offenders-schools_N.htm

Again, I am certainly NOT suggesting that the actions of any Church acting in a similar manner are in any way defensible or understandable. What I am suggesting is that this horrible problem is endemic to our modern society and it is patently unfair to single out a church or religion time and time again thereby suggesting that faith - not the overall moral health of the society - is that causal link.

The Church should be an icon, or exemplar, of how to deal with this problem but she is hardly alone with the consequences of this issue. Lord, have mercy.

The most interesting thing about this whole phenomenon is that prosecutors want to make the period when suits can be filed open for the Church, but block all efforts of people to bring suits against the public schools for the same offenses.

Do you call this persecution?

Bob

Partly religious bigotry and partly because to open the statute of limitations on public entities in such a manner requires a legislative waiving of 'sovereign immunity' to a degree. Given the millions of new cases that would open up, the fiscal repercussions of opening that door would ripple across the entire public sector and turn into a tsunami, one can see that money is at the root of those policies. Using Churches or insurance companies as the 'bogeyman' is like throwing red meat on to the floor of the ancient arena. It satiates the crowd but does little to solve anything real.

Official Department of Education studies have determined that roughly 10% of all public school students K-12 will be victims of sexual abuse at school, and that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, the perpetrators are teachers or other public school employees. We do not hear so much about this, because teachers have unions, and priests do not.

Here in Australia to try and stop the wrong people from working with children a background check is required for all people who have contact with children, such as teachers and ministers of religion. They either get a Working with children card or a negative notice that forbids them to work with children. The background check covers everything from juvenile offences to the present time and is live for the 3 yrs the card is valid for. It's only been around for 4 yrs in my state and has helped to identify some who should not be working with children across all work areas and they have been issued with a negative notice. http://www.checkwwc.wa.gov.au/checkwwc

I've been through background checks that make those given to aspiring teachers look like nice little chat over tea. They are intended to weed out security risks and the danger of spies getting access to sensitive information. We still get spies.

It does, however, enrich a health group of trial lawyers who, given their own biases in these cases, do get to have their cake and eat it too.

After reading the article I checked out the comments, thats the real education! The tone of the posts are casual and dismissive of the seriousness of the topic! IF you search right now for topics regarding clergy sexual abuse and read the comments there, you'll find a glaring difference!

A child is far more likely to be abused by a family member (or someone like his mother's boyfriend), or a teacher, than he is by a priest. And while even one such transgression against the innocent is one too many, it is important to keep everything in perspective: the vast majority of priests are not child abusers or perverts. According to the John Jay Study, only about 3% of all the priests who served over a fifty year period were ever credibly accused of child abuse; and more than half of all incidents of child abuse could be traced to a relative handful of serial predators within that group (those men also turned out to be among the only true pedophiles among the accused).

Yes, the Church needs to be held to a higher standard than secular institutions, but I do not think the prominence given to incidences of clerical sexual abuse in the media results from the concern of reporters for the sanctity of the Church, especially in light of their relative silence regarding far more widespread abuse occurring in other groups--such as teachers, step-parents and medical professionals. On the legislative side, we see a similar double standard. For instance, the California state legislature proposed laws that would lift the statute of limitations on accusations of child sexual abuse--but only in the case of clerics. Somehow or other, teachers get a pass. Could it have anything to do with the teachers unions and their support for liberal causes? Oh, come on! How cynical can we be? OK, that cynical.

On first blush, it seems to me that a law that would extend the statute of limitations limited to clerics and excluding other professionals might fail to pass constitutional review. Likely reasons that would probably involve a combination of 14th amendment equal protection arguments and a first amendment analysis over the limitation on religious activities to the exclusion of similar secular actions. There appears to be no rational basis for the state to make such a discriminatory determination. We will have to wait and see on that.

However, I would agree that cynicism rules in that the public employee unions, the professional associations (i.e. ABA and AMA etc...) and municipal association lobbys carry more weight in most state houses than do religious organizations and their lobbys.(Ironically, the dysfunctional body known as the New York State Legislature may be the one state liegislature that the combination of the Catholic and Jewish lobby might be a counterweight!)

In the end it is all about power and money rather than ideology (as well as getting those 'sexy' headlines that make legislators seem like people of 'action' in the reelection mailings and ads (as long as the headlines are not on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday --got to keep that news cycle in mind to fool the masses!)).

BTW, I am glad that this article got a good response here. I posted the same story on an Orthodox forum and got zero responses. Unfortunately, many of my Orthodox brethren fail to understand that the clergy sex abuse problem is not limited to the Catholic Church but is an important challenge to all people of faith.

While I don't think that the connection being made by Stuart is an unreasonalbe one to make, I would like to say that I'm a public school teacher, a member of a union (I come from a family with a history of union activism), and a supporter of some liberal causes, but I think if the statute of limitations for sexual offenses is to be extended, there should be no discrimination on the basis of the profession of the accused. To me, it is reprehensible that it would be extended only in the case of clerics. Furthermore, I suspect that such a limitation is unconstitutional. Finally, I suspect that most school teachers (public or private, union member or not) would agree with my position that if the statute of limitations is extended, it should be done uniformly.