Posted on 10/25/2009 12:06:31 PM PDT by Colofornian
It starts with a little extra attention and affection, a personalized note on a term paper and chummy after-school banter. Before long it escalates to hugging and explicit text messages. It's called "grooming," small indiscretions that child abuse experts say should alert principals and parents to a developing sexual relationship between a teacher and student.
But too often, these subtle cues go unnoticed until a relationship becomes inappropriate, or even criminal. Roy Junior High teacher Kenneth Taylor, who was charged 10 days ago with having sex with a former female student, is the latest addition to a growing list of teachers accused or reprimanded for fondling, seducing or pursuing the very students they're trusted to nurture and protect.
Sensational cases continue to make headlines in Utah, though there has been no discernible spike this year, state education officials say.
But sexual misconduct by teachers -- from inappropriate touching and downloading pornography on a school computer to full-blown molestation -- is a persistent and pervasive problem. It is the No. 1 reason Utah educators are forced to surrender their licenses. And the tools for preventing it haven't evolved much over the years.
"I talk about it every chance I get, at trainings, lectures and an education law class I teach," said Carol Lear, the state's top education lawyer. "The whole cell phone thing, texting and social networking. The landscape has just become increasingly complicated and sophisticated."
There are nearly 20,000 licensed educators in Utah, most of them hard-working professionals. But since 1992, the State Board of Education has suspended or revoked 313 teacher licenses, 208 of them (66 percent) for sexual misconduct. That doesn't include 10 cases under consideration before the Utah Professional Practices Advisory Commission.
In 2005, Utah ranked 16th in the nation for teacher sex offenses, according to an Associated Press survey of disciplinary records from 2001 to 2005 in 50 states and the District of Columbia. At that time, 52.7 percent of Utah teachers who lost their licenses surrendered them for sexual misconduct -- twice the national rate, the AP found.
Education and law enforcement officials can't say what accounts for Utah's disproportionate rank. Lear speculates it's because the state disciplines wrongdoers more rigorously than other states.
In Utah, all teachers undergo national FBI background checks upon hire and relicensure every five years. They must report suspected child abuse. "Inappropriate" communication with students is forbidden. Forfeiting a license for merely downloading pornography is common. And there's zero tolerance for sex offenses, including those plea bargained to lesser charges or subject to a diversion agreement.
It could also be because more victims come forward.
Deputy Salt Lake County District Attorney Alicia Cook believes victims are more willing to report abuse because of greater public awareness through news coverage and efforts to demystify the court process.
"I don't think this is coming out of the blue," Cook said. "This activity has been with us a really long time. We just haven't heard about it."
Substantiating and prosecuting sex abuse is difficult, said Cook, but resources to help victims survive the witness stand have increased over the years. She said child victims are encouraged to watch a video about the courts and often are allowed to see the courtroom and even sit in the judge's chair before taking the stand.
But national advocates argue child sex abuse remains grossly underreported.
Criminal screenings are far from foolproof, as many offenders escape notice and have otherwise clean histories, said Victor Vieth, executive director of the National Child Protection Training Center in Winona, Minn. "One study looked at the histories of 561 sex offenders and found they accounted for 195,000 victims. You could sexually abuse hundreds, even thousands of children and have only a 3 percent chance of being caught."
Vieth favors prevention through training.
Very few teachers leave college and enter the work force prepared to spot and report abuse, he said. They don't know how to pick up warning signs: teachers who "groom" students by crossing social boundaries and getting too personal.
They're not attuned to behavioral clues in students and should be reminded each year of their duty to report hunches, said Vieth. "It's about making it harder for a sexual predator to operate."
School principals can help by voicing their expectations, shunning locker room talk and sexual jokes, said Vieth. "Teachers should be role models and shouldn't be acting like they're at a bar."
Even pointed questions during the hiring process can help, said Vieth. "Those sorts of things make sex offenders really uncomfortable."
Many relationships between students and teachers eventually become public, but often not until the line has been crossed.
Taylor, the 45-year-old former woodshop teacher, allegedly met his now-17-year-old victim when she was 14 or 15 and a student at Roy Junior High, say police. The relationship turned sexual about 18 months ago and went unreported until August, say police.
It's possible a fellow teacher reported the crime; police won't say. But like so many teacher-student relationships, it allegedly began with flirtatious text messages and phones calls.
Last March, Linda R. Nef, 46, and Valynne Bowers, 39, two Bountiful Junior High School teachers, were accused of sexually assaulting the same 13-year-old student, after their separate relationships with him spiraled from personal conversations to the exchange of sexual text messages, phone sex and intercourse. Both teachers counseled the boy about his troubled past, which, according to testimony, included him being molested as a younger child. Bowers is in plea negotiations with prosecutors. Nef, who turned herself and Bowers into police, was sentenced in July to prison for three years to life.
Weber School District spokesman Nate Taggart said all principals in that district undergo annual ethics and sexual harassment training, which they're supposed to replicate at school.
That's true for most large districts, but more specialized training on how teachers can protect children and avoid misplaced allegations of abuse are "hit and miss," said Lear.
She is working on a computerized ethics test to be administered every time a teacher comes up for relicensing.
"It would be a teaching test, one of those you have to keep answering the questions until you get them right," she said. And in the future, Lear wants to create a short video with real-life scenarios illustrating red, yellow and green light behaviors.
"Our professionals are working in high-pressure environments that can be very isolating. They spend all day with children with very little input from peers. My gosh, their relationships are with children," said Lear. "It's becoming more and more clear to me that we can pass all the rules and legislation, but if we're going to solve this problem it will be through training."
My first question: In light of the MANY, MANY 2009 cases of sexual abuse in Utah, why is the above only coming out now? (Re: rates as of 2005?)
Why is the sex offenses so high in Utah? Why is Utah ranked about #17 among states in the ratio of sex offenders-to-population?
2009 cases: Sidebar to the above article @ SL Trib.com:
Here is the status of some recent cases of teachers charged with sexual improprieties.
Oct. 15 » Kenneth William Taylor, 45, a wood shop teacher at Roy Junior High School, is charged with developing a relationship with a 14- or 15-year-old student, which turned sexual when she was 16.
Oct. 13 » John Robert Cody, 39, a social studies teacher at Pineview High School in St. George, is alleged to have fondled two girls and a woman at his apartment complex pool in 2008.
Sept. 29 » Keith Gillins, 61, a long-time teacher, boys basketball coach, former Fillmore mayor and an LDS bishop, is sentenced to up to life in prison for the alleged sexual abuse of a 16-year-old student in the back of his classroom.
Sept. 8 » Douglas Bullock, 42, a teacher at Bloomington Hills Elementary in St. George, is charged with 12 counts of third-degree felony unlawful sex with a minor for an alleged relationship with a 17-year-old boy.
Sept. 7 » Matthew Scott Adams, 31, a shop teacher at Cedar Middle School in Cedar City, is sentenced to one year in the Iron County Jail for allegedly videotaping young women through their windows. Some of the victims were students where he taught.
Aug. 25 » Churchill Junior High substitute teacher Christopher Benjamin Page, 20, of Salt Lake City, pleads guilty to one count of forcible sexual abuse after Sandy police find him and a 13-year-old female student both shirtless in a parked car.
Aug. 17 » Melissa Ann Andreini, 28, a former special education teacher at Helper Junior High School, is charged with unlawful sexual conduct with a minor stemming from an alleged relationship with a 15-year-old student. She allegedly paid the victim between $1,400 and $1,500 after the encounters.
I wouldn't think there's anything small about this indiscretion.
Someone I know just told me this year that twenty five years ago one of our junior high school teachers cornered her and kissed her. She was confused and didn’t know what to do about it, so she just went home and never mentioned it to a soul. She also stated that as a child she didn’t realize it at the time, but he had spent substantial time “grooming” her.
Fortunately she had a head on her shoulders and avoided the teacher after that. I wish she had confided in an adult though, and they had gotten rid of the man.
There is nothing new under the sun.
But then we can't be too careful around those Mormons can we.
I would think that the rate is higher in Utah because mothers pay closer attention to their children and notice any change in mood or behavior. Mothers are doing their jobs!
So this is what it’s come to? Write a complimentary note on a student’s paper and be suspected of being a sexual predator...
America is in trouble.
Is this a Mormon-bashing thread?
I mean. Seriously. Is it?
what makes you think that? the one sarcastic Mormon comment?
I am surprised to hear this coming out of Utah.
Why don’t we teach kids how to recognize ‘grooming’ and that they need to tell their parents about it in sex ed, instead of gay indoctrination.
Just wondering why single out Utah.
I wasn’t actually saying it’s a Mormon-bashing thread. Or that there was any such intent. Pretty infrequent though to see a Utah thread though. :)
I was sort of standing up for them is all.
If those were all cases of abuse by Catholic priests, we’d have Katie Couric reporting live for a week with this as the top story.
But members of teacher’s unions are not so well reported.
You just need to look at Colofornian’s posting and comment history to see why this article is posted. This is a news story and it comes from the local paper. That’s fine. But he doesn’t post these articles because he’s interested in his local news. He is just looking for ways to somehow link the actions of one Mormon to smear prominent Mormons.
He explained it pretty clearly. Romney is a descendant of a Mormon polygamist. The teacher in the article has the same last name as Romney’s ancestor from 150 years ago. Romney is a Mormon. Therefore, Romney and this teacher are in cahoots (both Mormon with a last name shared 150 years ago), and the world needs to know how awfully close this child-molesting multi-wived Mormon Romney is to office!
Law school fail, IMO.
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It seems to me that all Utah would have to do to bring the rate down to the national average is start giving this sort of crap average treatment, rather than coming down on it so hard.
Sort of like solving the illegal immigration problem by giving them all citizenship.
BTW, I agree with you about Colofornicator. He, she or it is an absolute moonbat when it comes to anything about Mormons, not just Mitt Romney. It must be a pretty pathetic existense working 24/7 to wipe out one of the major (and most politically conservative) religious denominations in this country that, somehow, seems to keep growing in spite of his, her or its efforts.
Certainly it’s a problem, but my BS detector went into screaming red alert when I read this:
>>>One study looked at the histories of 561 sex offenders and found they accounted for 195,000 victims. You could sexually abuse hundreds, even thousands of children and have only a 3 percent chance of being caught.<<<
According to my handly little calculator, that means each sex offender molested 347.59 victims. Is that a little Wilt Chamberlain? Does that even make sense? The article goes out of its way - in that lurid soft-core manner of the modern media - to describe how teachers “groom” students. It also seems to take a long time - a lot longer than you’d need to molest 347 victims.
In the meantime, many of the elements of “grooming” described in this article are also part of the sexualization of teen-oriented music, film, books, and television. If you really wanted to see “grooming” in your school, talk with someone from a gay rights group about the poor oppressed LGBT teenagers and their lack of “companionship.” How many girls at your local school are being put on birth control right now - a sort of “grooming” in itself. Even this story, with its breathless ripped-bodice presentation, is grooming. We are creating the circumstances for students to think that the behavior is sometimes all right.
I don’t think it’s the same as it was 50 years ago. We have presidential aides telling crowds that its all right for a 15-year-old boy to get a condom when having sex with an older man. Stars line up to defend Polanski.
You reap what you sow.
So now, hinckley buzzard, you're becoming an apologist for the sexual perp crowd? Really?
#1 If you look @ the Trib sidebar, you'll note that between 1992-1997, you might average 1 educator dismissed for drug-related charges per year; 7 per year for sexual misconduct; 2 others for something else (average is 10 total per year). Starting in 1998 the rate went from 10 to an average of 21 per year over the past dozen years -- more than doubling! (Seems to coincide with the internet porn era) Of those 21, the average has been about 14 per year due to sexual misconduct...
#2 What? You want to send your sons & daughters to schools in a state where each year, you know 14-15 perps or more will be caught for sexually exploiting either them or their classmates?
#3 About over half of those 20,000 licensed educators are the 6th grade & under educators -- and those aren't really the ones (for the most part) they're having problems with -- it's the other 45%..and even then, most of the problems aren't even with the 15% of educators involved at the 7th-8th grade junior high level.
Does the article really say only 208? (It says that didn't include another 10 cases before the Utah Professional Advisory Board)
Beyond that, the reality is likely that you have...
...about 200 perps (of the 208-218) among 6,000 high school educators over 17 years. [And those were the ones that were publicly caught]
In fact, the ratio is probably around 175-180 high school educator-perps of 4,000 who've been around since 1998--given the reality that the sexual perp rate doubled when comparing '92-'97 to '98-'09...
So you've got some remedial ed needed for your math, H.B.: 'Cause that would make it anywhere from one out of EVERY 30 high school licensed educators had their license revoked over sexual misconduct...between the '92 and '09...and one of every 22-23 high school licensed educators between '98 and '09.
You don't even need a full two dozen high school educators in Utah...One's going to get caught for sexual misconduct! But according to you, you don't get too excited over what you claim is "Not exactly an epidemic."
Why do each of you assume that it's Mormon educators behind these assaults? (You know something we don't?)
I'm more curious as to why three of the first 16 or so posts were about me -- with Skenderbej showing a "gossip mentality" (not pinging me when mentioning my name...my, where is your online etiquette, anyway, Skender?) -- rather than the issues at hand?
What? It's just easier to blame the messenger than with reality?
What are each of you going to do next? Throw darts @ the SL Trib & the Odgen Herald-Examiner & KSL.com & MidUtahRadio.com for posting articles & news segments on this epidemic over the past 3 months? Are you going to tell them to just "shut their media traps" 'cause you're more concerned about Utah PR than these students?
My, how compassionate of you.
what some Catholics did and maybe still do is cover for abusers, out of embarrassment, out of loyalty to the Catholic church or that priest of the parish....We know the results.....
so I hope other communities learn the lesson....
better to face the demons when they occur and not when they have done damage for years and years...
I think the question about this being a Mormon bashing thread was based partially on the referenced remarks, but more likely because of the author, Colorfornian. He/she lives for the opportunity to post negative comments about Mormons. Poor thing.
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