IPS teacher kept his job despite red flags(Gay teacher made advances that were ignored)

Indiana child welfare officials and school districts in two states had a responsibility to protect children in Lee N. Tibbetts’ classroom, but a series of miscommunications and missteps among those agencies failed to catch a pattern of problematic behavior over three years.

That breakdown allowed Tibbetts to remain in the classroom despite multiple accusations, including one that eventually led to the math teacher being arrested on charges alleging he molested a student while teaching for Indianapolis Public Schools.

A review by The Indianapolis Star and The Cincinnati Enquirer shows that red flags were raised as early as 2007, two years before police say Tibbetts molested a 13-year-old Indianapolis boy.Among the findings:

» Tibbetts resigned from Cincinnati Public Schools in 2007 while being investigated for making inappropriate comments to a student. Ohio law requires the district to report such resignations to state regulators, but the district can’t determine whether it did so.

» Indianapolis Public Schools never contacted the school Tibbetts last worked for and failed to uncover his history before hiring him. IPS also failed to follow up on the claim in 2008 that Tibbetts had “come on” to a student and might not have documented earlier concerns.

» Indiana’s Department of Child Services decided not to investigate the August 2008 claim that Tibbetts touched a 15-year-old boy’s arm and knee while asking sexually suggestive questions, a decision experts say was wrong and could have allowed the teacher to victimize additional children.

The incidents show the systems designed to protect children are only as good as the vigilance of those agencies to pursue and document accusations.

It wasn’t until another student came forward in May to say he had been molested that Indianapolis police were alerted. Police investigated, and Tibbetts was charged with six counts of felony child molestation.

But when police dug further, they uncovered the earlier incident that DCS did not investigate — and filed another felony charge, for child solicitation. A trial date for Tibbetts has not been set.

State Sen. Brent Waltz, R-Greenwood, who helped write a bill to create more independent oversight of DCS, said the lack of communication among agencies and poor oversight in Tibbetts’ case are alarming.

“It sounds like there were at least a half-dozen points where better knowledge, better oversight could have solved this problem,” Waltz said. “If those warning signs weren’t enough to get the prosecutor involved or to get the school system to remove him, what would it take?”

The first red flag appears to have been raised in 2007, when an 18-year-old Cincinnati student claimed the teacher made sexual conversation with him and touched his arms and legs.

Tibbetts resigned after the school year ended, in the midst of the district’s investigation. That investigation appears to have been dropped.

“Due to summer schedules and the fact that due process hearings involving (the teachers’ union) don’t occur during the summer,” spokeswoman Janet Walsh said, “it had not been completed . . . when he submitted his resignation.”

Ohio law requires districts to alert the state when teachers resign while under investigation. Last week, Cincinnati officials could find only a draft copy of a letter to the state about Tibbetts, and Walsh said the district was unable to confirm it was ever sent.

Scott Blake, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Education, would not say whether the state had received a letter. He declined to comment on Tibbetts’ issues in Cincinnati, other than to confirm the state had not disciplined him for any misdeeds.

If the Cincinnati district had reported the matter, and the state confirmed the behavior, it could have issued a public or private reprimand to Tibbetts, an action it has taken in the past in similar cases.

That information then could have been disclosed to Indiana officials when Tibbetts requested a license here.

Instead, when Indiana Department of Education officials checked with the Ohio Department of Education, it confirmed Tibbetts was a teacher in good standing. And his Indiana teaching license was approved in July 2007.

License granted, Tibbetts applied to Indianapolis Public Schools to teach for the 2007-08 school year. The district ran a standard background check, including checking references with the Cincinnati schools, IPS officials said.

“When HR checked him, they had two letters from principals that were sterling,” IPS Superintendent Eugene White said. “He was clean.”

District officials suggested that had they known that Tibbetts had quit his last job while under investigation, they might not have hired him.

But the background check IPS did had a limitation: The district never checked with anyone at the school where Tibbetts worked before he applied for a job in Indianapolis.

Instead, Tibbetts was given forms by IPS to give to his references that they could send in to IPS. All three that came back were from administrators who had worked with Tibbetts earlier in his career.

That policy makes sense, IPS spokeswoman Mary Louise Bewley said, because potential employees might not want their supervisors to know they’re looking for other jobs.

Bewley added that IPS also received a letter from Cincinnati Public Schools’ human resources department confirming Tibbetts’ dates of employment but raising no concerns. It is unclear, though, what questions IPS officials asked their counterparts in Cincinnati.

Cincinnati Public Schools says it has no record that IPS contacted the district to ask about Tibbetts, although it said individual principals could have been contacted without making a record in Tibbetts’ file.

In his first year in IPS, Tibbetts worked in the district’s alternative schools — and the district might have been made aware of the first hint of trouble.

Supervisors that year warned Tibbetts to avoid close relationships with students after concerns came to light from students or parents there, said Jeffery C. White, a former IPS principal who later supervised Tibbetts.

Bewley said Tibbetts’ personnel file showed no record of any incident during the 2007-08 school year. Repeated attempts to reach the administrator who had overseen Tibbetts were unsuccessful.

Such an incident could have been a crucial chance for IPS to document Tibbetts’ missteps. Many employers issue letters to employees spelling out expectations after a first problem to lay a foundation for more severe discipline if it happens again.

Tibbetts had been on his new job at Marshall Community High School for a few weeks in 2008 when a 15-year-old boy and his mother told the principal Tibbetts had made sexual conversation with the boy and rubbed his arm and knee.

School administrators did what they were supposed to: They reported the incident to the Department of Child Services.

IPS social worker Shawnieka Pope called the DCS hotline and told an operator about the 15-year-old boy’s accusations.

She told the state the boy said Tibbetts asked him if anyone in his family was gay and if he had “done anything” with another boy. Tibbetts then rubbed his knee and arm.

Jennifer Hubartt, regional manager for the DCS local office in Marion County, said supervisors reviewing reports ask themselves one key question: If what I’m seeing were true, would that rise to the level of a crime under Indiana law?

“When we’re looking at the sex abuse reports that are coming in, we’re going to look at the allegations — the narrative that is provided to us — and see if anywhere in that if it fits into the statute requirement for that report to be assigned,” she said. “If it does not fit it, then we cannot assign it.”

An agency supervisor initially determined the report did not meet the standard to launch an investigation, a decision that was upheld by a management team that reviews hotline reports that are not assigned for investigation.

Based on the information the agency had, Hubartt explained, there was no other legal option.

“I don’t think we’re at fault at all in this,” she said. “We regret that this person victimized people. But we couldn’t have done this differently under the Indiana law as it exists.”

Although DCS might not have thought the incident was criminal, the police ultimately did. The Marion County prosecutor has filed a child solicitation charge against Tibbetts related to that 2008 incident — the one DCS declined to investigate.

Two experts who reviewed a copy of the agency’s intake report obtained by The Star said the facts warranted investigation.

“DCS clearly fumbled the ball on this,” said Henry Karlson, professor emeritus at the Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis.

Karlson has written a book on child abuse as well as contributed articles on the subject to the Indiana Law Review and the Journal of Child Abuse and Neglect. He said the details DCS had would, if true, constitute sexual misconduct with a minor under Indiana law.

“On this statement alone,” Karlson said of the report’s reference to Tibbetts touching the boy’s knee and arm, “I could probably get a conviction . . . from half the juries in Indiana.”

The Indiana statute says any adult “fondling or touching” a child at least 14 but younger than 16 “with intent to arouse or to satisfy the sexual desires of either the child or the older person” commits sexual misconduct with a minor.

And, he explained, the threshold for launching an abuse investigation is much lower than what is needed to obtain a criminal conviction.

“He was ‘coming on’ to the child, which clearly indicated the child thought it was sexual,” Karlson said. “Add to that the rubbing of the knee while talking about sexual orientation and sexual activity. There were red flags all over this. I have no idea why they didn’t investigate this.”

When DCS “screened out” the case, it alerted IPS officials, although several district administrators said they thought — erroneously — that the state had investigated and found the claims to be unsubstantiated.

IPS gives its administrators the option to request an internal review of such matters even if the state determines it doesn’t meet its threshold for review, said Jane Ajabu, the district’s human resources chief.

Jeffery White, the former principal, said he didn’t know that option existed and that he would have requested an internal investigation if he had known he could.

“I’ve never heard of that,” he said last week. "Nobody said, ‘You know, there’s an option to have it investigated more.’ "

And neither IPS nor DCS notified the Indianapolis police. After another boy came forward in May, an IMPD detective found a copy of the same report that the state had decided not to investigate.

The 13-year-old boy told police Tibbetts performed oral sex on him at least six times, threatened him with low grades if he didn’t comply and coached him to lie to an assistant principal who nearly walked in on them, according to a probable cause affidavit.

In the wake of the arrest, Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi said publicly that he faults both DCS and IPS for not referring the August 2008 report to local police.

Several policymakers and child advocates said the various agencies’ failure to act prior to Tibbetts’ arrest raises serious questions about how children in Indiana are protected.

Joyce Thomas, president of the Center for Child Protection and Family Support in Washington, D.C., said DCS should have looked into the 2008 accusation rather than dismissing it and allowing Tibbetts to potentially victimize more children.

“That’s their job,” she said. “They must rise to the occasion of being absolutely sure that no child is in danger. The only way to do that is through an investigation. Just to rule it out is dangerous, truly dangerous.”

She added that reports from schools and other institutions “should have the highest priority because so many more children are exposed to potential harm.”

The family of the victim in the alleged 2008 incident is outraged that Tibbetts was allowed to remain with students despite all the red flags.

“They should have done something about it when we told them,” a spokesman for the family said. The Star is not naming the person because it could identify the young victim.

The spokesman said school and child welfare officials dropped the ball, leaving Tibbetts in the classroom. But he also blamed officials in Cincinnati for allowing Tibbetts to continue having access to young boys.

“They should have caught him back in Ohio,” he said. “They should have dealt with it then, but they swept it under the table, and that allowed him to come up here and take advantage of other kids.”

This startling statistic is of course is predicated on the fact that molesting little boys is a homosexual act: a man who molests boys is by definition a homosexual.

There's just no getting around this issue.

It's extremely rare for a molestor to vary between male and female victims. The homosexual priest scandal in the Catholic Church offers some detailed reports. Something like 94% of the cases in the Philadelphia Diocee were gay "priests" attacking boys. There was an occasional punctuation of a young priest having relations with a 17 year old female parishoner, but this was far from the norm.

This startling statistic is of course is predicated on the fact that molesting little boys is a homosexual act: a man who molests boys is by definition a homosexual. There's just no getting around this issue.

I wouldn't agree to that any more than I would agree to the suggestion that a male that molests little girls is, by definition, heterosexual. They are involved in heterosexual acts in as much as they have chosen an opposite sex victim but I doubt most would consider that to be either a conventional or professional working definition of heterosexuality. Properly ordered heterosexuality also assumes that your partners are partners and not victims or rape or predation.

It's extremely rare for a molestor to vary between male and female victims.

I'm not sure where you get that idea. Most pedophiles are using a different set of criteria to choose their victims than most people would understand. The sex of the child can be very low on the list of what makes them an appealing target. Or they may be in circumstances which make it easier to victimize one sex over the other.(Hanson, R. K., & Bussière, M. T. (1996). Predictors of sexual offender recidivism: A meta-analysis) Combine this with the typical number of victims for a sexual abuser of children (Nearly 70% of child sex offenders have between 1 and 9 victims; at least 20% have 10 to 40 victims. - can find source if you need it) and you end up with a wider selection of victims than most people probably think.

I'm not sure a direct comparison with the scandals in the Catholic priesthood is appropriate. These were not your standard gay males or your standard sexual abusers. They were drawn to that institution in highly disproportionate numbers for other reasons and institutional stupidity and sloth allowed situations to fester that should have been stomped on immediately.

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