With more and more stories appearing about teachers being caught sexually abusing students I wanted to go a little more into depth by looking at part of a 2004 study that was commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education titled "Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature" by Virginia Commonwealth University Professor Charol Shakeshaft.
To tie this in with female offenders there is the excerpt below:
In studies that ask students about offenders, sex differences are less than in adult reports. The 2000 AAUW data indicate that 57.2 percent of all students report a male offender and 42.4 percent a female offender with the Cameron et al. study reporting nearly identical proportions as the 2000 AAUW data (57 percent male offenders vs. 43 percent female offenders).
In some of these cases the behaviors and patterns that occur are not understood or are misunderstood. This can and does lead to the victims being treated very poorly by some people and in effect being abused even more. Here are some more excerpts that talk about this:
sexual abusers in schools use various strategies to trap students. They lie to them, isolate them, make them feel complicit, and manipulate them into sexual contact. Often teachers target vulnerable or marginal students who are grateful for the attention. And, students that adults regard as marginal are also unlikely to be accepted as credible complainants against a celebrated teacher (Shakeshaft and Cohan, 1994).
In elementary schools, the abuser is often one of the people that students most like and that parents most trust. The abusers of children younger than seventh grade have different patterns than those who abuse older children (Shakeshaft, 2003). The educators who target elementary school children are often professionally accomplished and even celebrated. Particularly compared to their non-abusing counterparts, they hold a disproportionate number of awards. It is common to find that educators who have been sexually abusing children are also the same educators who display on their walls a community “Excellence in Teaching” award or a “Teacher of the Year” certificate. This popularity confounds district officials and community members and prompts them to ignore allegations on the belief that “outstanding teachers” cannot be abusers (Shakeshaft and Cohan, 1994).
I would point out that this also happens with middle and high school teachers as well. And the more popular the teacher the more the victim is usually attacked by various groups.
Because most educator abusers seek to conceal their sexual contact with students, offenders often target students that they can control. In some cases, control is characterized by force. However, most abuse occurs within the much subtler framework of grooming and enticement. While almost all children respond to positive attention from an educator, students who are estranged from their parents, who are unsure of themselves, who are engaged in risky behavior or whose parents are engaged in such behavior are often targeted, not only because they might be responsive but also because they are more likely to maintain silence (Robins, 2000; Shakeshaft and Cohan, 1994).
Robins (2000) describes the process of grooming, where an abuser selects a student, gives the student attention and rewards, provides the student with support and understanding, all the while slowly increasing the amount of touch or other sexual behavior. The purpose of grooming is to test the child’s ability to maintain secrecy, to desensitize the child through progressive sexual behaviors, to provide the child with experiences that are valuable and that the child won’t want to lose, to learn information that will discredit the child, and to gain approval from parents (Robins, 2000). Grooming allows the abuser to test the student’s silence at each step. It also serves to implicate the student, resulting in children believing that they are responsible for their own abuse because, “I never said stop.”
The grooming process that happens is a very important piece if someone wants to understand some of the often asked questions when these cases come up.
This next piece is a key piece and one often seen when the offender is female:
Some of the children who are sexually abused by educators do not characterize what is happening as abuse. That is not to say they don’t identify what is happening as shameful, unwanted, wrong, or frightening. In many cases, they are told that what is happening is love. Many abusers of children at all ages couch what they are doing to the children as love, both romantic and parental.
You can look at some of the recent cases that have been profiled on here or other sites and you will see that the talk of "love" is often brought up in cases where the offender is female.
Offenders work hard to keep children from telling. Almost always they persuade students to keep silent either by intimidation and threats (if you tell, I’ll fail you), by exploiting the power structure (if you tell, no one will believe you), or by manipulating the child’s affections (if you tell, I’ll get in trouble; if you tell, I won’t be able to be your friend anymore).
Thus, childish or adolescent naiveté is taken advantage of to keep children silent. Because many children who are targeted have previously been abused by others, the legacy of abuse increases the likelihood of silence. Fear of discovery and punishment or shame for doing something forbidden also keep children from speaking.
These next two pieces are crucial for people to know and understand:
Because children often get something positive in the transaction—attention, gifts, physical pleasure, and feelings of belonging or attractiveness—they can be made to feel responsible. Offenders use this to their advantage.
Finally, abuse is allowed to continue because even when children report abuse, they are not believed. Because of the power differential, the reputation difference between the educator and the child, or the mindset that children are untruthful, many reports by children are ignored or given minimal attention.
I have personally witnessed these things happen in a few cases I was exposed to and eventually became involved with. I watched the victims be ruthlessly attacked for reporting what happened to them. Lets look at the next excerpts that talk about this:
Robins (2000) found that the most common reason that students don’t report educator sexual misconduct is fear that they won’t be believed. Research indicates that students have good reasons to suspect they won’t be believed. Robins documents the case of a teacher, Kenneth DeLuca, who was convicted of sexually abusing 13 students between the ages of 10 and 18 over a period of 21 years. Nearly all of the students reported this abuse at the time. However, school officials did not take these accusations seriously.
Overwhelmingly, the girls experienced a disastrous response when they told about DeLuca’s behavior. Many were disbelieved, some were told to leave schools, parents were allegedly threatened with lawsuits (129-130).
And anytime there is an allegation of sexual abuse there is almost always the comment about false allegations. So what did this study find?:
The possibility of a false accusation is included in this section because there is widespread belief that false accusations are common. Because this is the prevailing mental model, students are often not believed.
Currently, there is no mechanism for determining how many false accusations occur. Because many of the accusations involve behavior that might not be easily prosecuted under criminal statutes, for instance verbal and visual abuse or physical abuse that is not penetration, there is confusion about what constitutes abuse. While this issue will be explored in more detail in a subsequent section, the distinction between a criminal offense that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and an incident of sexual misconduct is sometimes blurred, leaving the impression that if there is not a prosecution (or a criminal charge), the accusation must have been false.
This next part has to make a person wonder:
In the Shakeshaft and Cohan (1995) study of 225 allegations of educator sexual misconduct, there was not one in which the actions reported weren’t proved to have happened. Although the accuracy of student reports of educator behavior was unanimous, the meaning of the behavior differed between student and educator. In a handful of cases, the student’s characterization of the act as sexual misconduct was labeled by the educator and administrative officials as touching with no sexual intent.
I did a purely unscientific study by looking at over 800+ completed cases that have been reported in the media in the past few years. The results of those cases break down to 769 guilty, 20 not guilty, 26 charges dismissed. With that said here is another excerpt:
However, both Robin (1992) and Yates (1991) have pointed out that false accusations can cause serious emotional stress to the person falsely accused. Olson and Lawler (2003) have compiled cases in which educators have been falsely accused of maltreatment of students, including accusations of sexual abuse. Their accounts describe the harm that false accusations coupled with inadequate investigations can yield.
And finally I wanted to post some excerpts from the report that talk about the consequences to the abusive educators (what they are talking about is so common that is has its own slang term called passing the trash):
In an early study of 225 cases of educator sexual abuse in New York, all of the accused had admitted to sexual abuse of a student but none of the abusers was reported to authorities and only 1 percent lost their license to teach (Shakeshaft and Cohan, 1994). All of the accused had admitted to physical sexual abuse of a student but only 35 percent received a negative consequence for their actions: 15 percent were terminated or, if not tenured, they were not rehired; and 20 percent received a formal reprimand or suspension. Another 25 percent received no consequence or were reprimanded informally and off-the-record. Nearly 39 percent chose to leave the district, most with positive recommendations or even retirement packages intact.
Of those who left, superintendents reported that 16 percent were teaching in other schools and that they had no idea what the other 84 percent were doing. A recent report on sexual abuse in New York City indicates that 60 percent of employees who were accused of sexual abuse were transferred to desk jobs at offices inside schools and 40 percent of these teachers were repeat offenders (Campanile and Montero, 2001). In many instances, agreements are made to avoid legal battles with the alleged abuser (Shakeshaft and Cohan, 1994).
Several investigative reports have publicized individual cases and the response by districts to allegations of educator sexual misconduct. For instance, O’Hagen and Willmsen report that of 159 Washington state coaches “who were reprimanded, warned, or let go in the past decade because of sexual misconduct . . . at least 98 of them continued coaching or teaching afterward.” (Dec. 15, 2003) Many school districts make confidential agreements with abusers, trading a positive recommendation for a resignation.
In another example, O’Hagen (2004) reports that a Seattle educator, Luke Markishtum, had two decades of complaints of sex with students and providing alcohol and marijuana to students prior to his arrest for smuggling six tons of marijuana into the state. The district paid Markishtum the remainder of his salary that year, agreed to keep the record secret, and gave him an additional $69,000.
And while recently some States have made changes to address these issues it does not appear that changes have been made in lines with the recommendations that this report produced. You can read the recommendations for yourself in the report and I urge everyone to do so.
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