People convicted of inappropriate sexual behavior with minors often keep their employment at public and private schools or are rehired, a report released today by the Government Accountability Office found. Convicted offenders are either not fired by the school after they are found to have sexually abused a student, or rehired by other schools in spite of that fact.
The report, conducted at the request of Rep. George Miller, the current chairman of the House Committee on Education and Labor, looked at 15 cases in which sexual misconduct with students occurred.
“In at least 11 of these 15 cases,” the report found, “schools allowed offenders with histories of targeting children to obtain or continue employment. Even more disturbing, in at least 6 of the cases, offenders used their new positions as school employees or volunteers to abuse more children after they were hired.”
Often, the report found, teachers convicted of inappropriate sexual behavior with students were permitted to resign, and no disciplinary action was taken. As a result, there was nothing on that person’s resume that would indicate a problem in the past. Several of these teachers were even given recommendation letters from the school. For instance, a teacher in Connecticut was forced to resign after looking at pornography on school computers. Although the school district reported the abuse to child protective services,” the report found, “a district administrator told another Connecticut school seeking a reference that they would rehire the teacher “without reservation.”
This happened a second time with the same teacher, and he was subsequently “convicted of sexually assaulting two students.”
Schools told GAO that they did not take disciplinary action against the teacher because firing a teacher is expensive, and that giving a former teacher a bad recommendation opened up the school to a potential lawsuit.
“One expert we spoke with noted that it is often easier and faster for school administrators to remove a problem teacher informally in order to protect the children within their own district,” the report said, “especially when the administrator agrees to provide a positive recommendation to encourage a resignation.”
The report also found that schools either did not check potential employees criminal history, or did so in a fashion that was “inadequate” and therefore did not yield the relevant information. In three of the cases, schools did not follow up on sexual abuse of minors reported on a potential employees job application, or failed to ask why that section was not filled in by the employee.
“This report is horrific and incredibly troubling. It is very clear from GAO’s work that there was a major breakdown in the schools highlighted in this report – and quite possibly, in many more schools across the country,” Rep. Miller said in a press release. “Our schools have a fundamental obligation to children and parents that all students are safe at school at all times. What we see here is a major violation of that trust and very poor judgment by some school officials.”
The report followed 2004 surveys “documented by the Department of Education” that “estimated that millions of students are subjected to sexual misconduct by a school employee sometime between kindergarten and the twelfth grade,” the report explained.