Sexual Misconduct in the Schools

Sexual misconduct in schools is a serious issue that involves inappropriate behavior by educators towards students. This misconduct can take various forms, including physical, verbal, or visual acts designed to sexually arouse either party. Both male and female educators have been implicated in such behaviors, which can profoundly impact the mental health and well-being of affected students. High-profile cases have drawn public attention, leading to legal interventions and policy reforms aimed at prevention and accountability.

Educators from various roles—including teachers, coaches, and even administrative staff—can perpetrate misconduct, often exploiting their positions of trust. Strategies for preventing such incidents include the implementation of comprehensive training for teachers, strict reporting procedures, and educational programs for students about recognizing and reporting abusive behavior. Additionally, legal frameworks, such as Title IX, seek to protect students from sexual discrimination and misconduct in educational settings.

Despite ongoing efforts, challenges remain, including inadequate reporting systems and the potential for offenders to move between school districts without facing consequences. Addressing these issues is crucial for ensuring a safe and supportive learning environment for all students.

Published in: 2023

By: Hayden, Kellie

Subject Terms

Sexual Misconduct in the Schools

Abstract

Court cases help shape educational misconduct policy and news-grabbing headlines bring public attention to this educational problem. The most notorious type is sexual misconduct of teachers with students. Sexual misconduct occurs about equally among male and female teachers. Ultimately, this behavior seriously hurts children. This article presents an overview of sexual misconduct in school, with viewpoints on how to prevent such educator misconduct and how to track and fire the individuals who commit the crimes.

Educator misconduct covers a variety of offenses. The most publicized type in the media and the High Court system are ones where school employees make poor judgments in their relationships with their students and sexual misconduct occurs. Public school educators can include but are not limited to administrators, counselors, secretaries, teachers, substitute teachers, teacher's aides, coaches, custodians, security guards, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, volunteers, or others who may encounter a student in a school-based setting (Sutton, 2004).

Overview

Examples of Misconduct in the Media

In 1997, Alaskan teachers had disciplinary action taken for the following types of misconduct: sexual misconduct; conviction of theft; theft of Ritalin from student supplies and use of fraudulent transcript (Green, 1998).
In 1997, a Pennsylvania teacher surrendered his license because he was showing pornographic movies and giving alcohol to eighth and ninth graders (Zemel, 1999).
In 2007, 167 Ohio bus drivers were found to have (DUI) Driving Under the Influence or other drug related license suspensions (Marshall, 2007).
The tight-knit Pennsylvania State University community was shaken by the 2011 child sexual abuse scandal involving Gerald "Jerry" Sandusky, the university football team's former defensive coordinator. In 2012, Sandusky was convicted of forty-five out of forty-eight counts of sexual abuse involving ten underage boys over a fifteen-year period. Sandusky had met the boys through Second Mile, a charity that he and his wife had founded in 1972 (Chappell, 2012; Gladwell, 2012).
In 2013, a California elementary school teacher was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison for lewd conduct against 23 Los Angeles school children at Miramonte Elementary School (Winton & Ceasar, 2013).
In 2016, the Boston Globe released a report claiming that since 1991, at least two hundred students attending more than sixty private institutions in New England have accused staff members, including administrators and teachers, of sexual abuse or harassment. Reportedly more than ninety lawsuits had been filed in conjunction with the accusations and over thirty school employees had been fired (Seelye, 2016). Several additional private schools began comprehensive investigations into sexual misconduct following the report, with New Hampshire's elite institution St. Paul's School reporting in 2017 that nearly twenty of its staff members were suspected of engaging in acts of sexual misconduct over the span of decades (McDonald, 2017).In April 2023, the New York Post reported six teachers were arrested across the US for sexual misconduct with students (Algar, 2023).

Types of Sexual Misconduct. In Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature, Carol Shakeshaft (2004) defines sexual misconduct as behavior by an educator that is directed at a student and intended to sexually arouse or titillate the educator or the child. The behaviors are "physical, verbal, or visual. Examples include touching breasts or genitals of students; oral, anal, and vaginal penetration; showing students pictures of a sexual nature; and sexually-related conversations, jokes, or questions directed at students" (Shakeshaft, 2004, p. 9).

Goorian (1999) describes two types of sexual misconduct recognized by the law:

"Quid pro quo (this for that) occurs when a school employee explicitly or implicitly grants a student a favor in exchange for sexual gratification. The employee may, as a condition for a student's participation in an educational activity or in return for an educational decision, request that the student submit to unwelcome sexual advances, grant sexual favors, or agree to engage in other verbal, nonverbal, or physical conduct of a sexual nature. Hostile environment means unwanted and unwelcome verbal or physical contact of a sexual nature that is sufficiently severe, persistent, or pervasive to limit a student's ability to participate in or benefit from an educational program or activity" (Goorian, 1999, p. 2).

Goorian also explains that sexual misconduct behavior can be classified in three levels that include contact and non-contact behavior:

"Level I includes non-contact behavior such as exhibitionism and sharing sexual photos. Contact behavior includes fondling, touching, kissing, and sexual hugging.
Level II is non-contact actions that include sexual comments, taunting, and asking about sexual activity.
Level III is contact behavior that includes all types of sexual or genital contact" (Goorian, 1999).

Legitimate Nonsexual Touching. The US Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR) offers examples of legitimate nonsexual touching: a coach hugs a student who makes a goal or a kindergarten teacher hugs a student who skinned a knee. However, repeated hugs under inappropriate circumstances can make for a hostile environment (Goorian, 1999).

Teachers Who Abuse. If a person in a position of trust or authority has consensual or non-consensual sex with a student before he or she is 18, it is a crime. Psychological profiles show female teachers who are involved in sexual misconduct with students are generally socially immature rather than sexually deviant (Driedger, 2003).

While teachers and coaches tend to be under media scrutiny most often, sexual misconduct exists in all educator categories. Music teachers or coaches often spend one-on-one time with individual students, and as a result they are more likely to sexually abuse. Between 1995 and 2003, 25 percent of the educators in Texas who were coaches or music teachers were disciplined for sexual infractions involving students. Washington state teachers who coach were "three times more likely to be investigated by the state for sexual misconduct than non-coaching teachers" (Shakeshaft, 2004, p. 22).

One researcher placed educators who abuse into two categories—those who abuse children younger than seventh grade and those who abuse students in eighth grade and above. Those who abuse young children in seventh grade or below tended to be high achieving teachers who were respected by the public and their peers. This sort of notoriety protects the abuser from investigation. The educators who abuse older students were typically average teachers who engaged in sexual misbehavior due to bad judgment (Abboud et al., 2020).

How Sexual Abusers Manipulate. Students are taught to trust their instructors and leaders, but sexual abusers in schools manipulate students into sexual contact by lying, controlling, and exercising their authority over them. Often predators victimize students who are vulnerable or marginalized and often needy for attention. These marginal students are also more likely to be unaccepted as plausible and trustworthy complainants. In elementary schools, the abuser is often a favorite teacher and is often professionally accomplished. Successful educators are most likely to connect quickly and easily with children. At the later levels of education, namely middle and high schools, abusers are not necessarily always wonderful educators. Initially, the acts are more often open opportunities, a result of poor choices or a misguided sense of authority (Shakeshaft, 2004).

Most abuse occurs with "grooming" and enticement. Abusers try to spend additional time with students, and they may send invites to non-education-based activities like trips, movies, and parties that occur during after-school hours. Abusers may also buy students gifts, tell sexual jokes, and tease them sexually. This form of verbal abuse is a method of "grooming" victims. As such joking continues without being reprimanded, abusers may advance their intimate play by touching and making other sexual advances that probably will not be reported (Goorian, 2004).

Offenders work hard at maintaining secrecy and silence. Many children have been abused by others, or they fear punishment. Some children do not realize that they are being abused. However, they may be able to understand the inappropriate relationship as shameful, unwanted, wrong, or frightening. Children often assume that such behavior is "love," as this is explained to them by their abusers. Offenders use intimidation, exploitation of power (Abboud et al., 2020), and manipulation of a child's affection to keep the misconduct a secret (Shakeshaft, 2004).

Further Insights

The Law. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) was an amendment to the Section 5414 mandate of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA) that called for a deeper exploration into the issue of sexual misconduct in school systems. This mandate required the US Department of Education to administer a literature review study of sexual abuse in US schools. This review is called Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature (Shakeshaft, 2004).

In addition, court cases help shape and define education policy on employee misconduct in public schools. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is considered one of the most important legal protections from educational sexual misconduct (Abboud et al., 2020), and it is used by many victims who were sexually abused by educators to plead their cases. Though this amendment avoids dealing directly with educator sexual harassment, it restricts all forms of sex discrimination in any organization that collects federal money (Sutton, 2004).

According to the US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights' guidelines, schools are required by the Title IX regulations to adopt and publish grievance procedures providing for prompt and equitable resolution of all sex discrimination complaints, including complaints of sexual harassment. Students should be notified of the procedures which should be written in language appropriate to the age of the school's students. Without a widely understood grievance procedure in place, a school (or school district) is held liable regardless of whether sexual harassment has occurred (Stein, 2000, p. 1).

In the 1992 court case Franklin v. Gwinnett County Public Schools, Christine Franklin sued for $6 million in a civil suit against her school district. Franklin claimed that she was continually sexually harassed beginning in the fall of 1986. Originally, the Title IX statutes did not authorize damages to solve the problem legally, but they allowed back pay and prospective relief for school employees. The lower courts figured that since she was not an employee at the time of the harassment, she could not receive monetary damages. However, in a summary judgment, the Supreme Court decided to enforce Title IX legally by authorizing a damages remedy (Sutton, 2004).

In 2010, childhood sexual abuse survivor and child advocate Erin Merryn began urging legislators in Illinois to pass laws requiring school districts to add age-appropriate child sexual abuse education to elementary school curricula, and educate teachers, administrators, and parents about abuse prevention. Illinois was the first state to pass what became known as Erin's Law on February 14, 2011. Other states have since passed similar legislation (Erin's Law, 2012). According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, as of 2015, twenty-six US states had passed legislation mandating that states study or develop curricula for age-appropriate child sexual abuse education and prevention; in many cases, the laws also stipulate a type of counseling or safe way for children to report cases of sexual misconduct and require training for school personnel ("Child sexual abuse prevention," 2015).

From 2010 to 2020, the number of statutes aiming to protect students from this type of abuse nearly doubled, but the proliferation of the definition and the lack of standardized penalties left much to be accomplished. In 2020, around half of the states had specific laws or statutes protecting children from educator sexual misconduct (Abboud et al., 2020).

School Districts May Be Liable for Teacher's Misconduct. In 1998, the court case Gebser v. Lago Vista Independent School District involved a student in the eighth grade and a high school teacher who maintained a sexual relationship for over a year. The student asked for damages for sexual harassment, insisting that the school district and offending teacher had infringed upon her rights as stated under Title IX. The student claimed the teacher acted as the school district's agent, as he was employed by the school district, making the district liable. The student also faulted the school district on the grounds that it had never warned or educated instructors, students, and parents about the realities and dangers of sexual harassment (Sutton, 2004).

In the end, The Supreme Court supported the lower courts, concluding that damages could not be recovered because school officials with power to correct the teacher misconduct did not have knowledge of the misconduct. Therefore, the district could not be held liable by the student. The Supreme Court also held that the district did not constitute deliberate indifference because of lack of a grievance procedure (Sutton, 2004).

However, in Doe v. Warren Consolidated Schools (2003), a federal district court in Michigan ruled that the school district could be held liable for teacher sexual harassment under both Section 1983 and Title IX because school administrators knew of a teacher's long history of sexual misconduct with female students. The district failed to remove him from having contact with students. The court ruled that the district could be held liable for sexual misconduct because the district knew the employee's sexual misconduct history and did not take steps to try to prevent contact with the students (Sutton, 2004, p. 8).

Sexual Misconduct Cases in the Media. In State of Florida v. Beth Friedman (1999), a 42-year-old Broward County public school teacher was under suspicion of having sexual relations with a 15-year-old student. Though Friedman confessed to her involvement and the jury acquitted her of statutory rape, she was convicted of contributing to the delinquency of a minor because she had given the student drugs and alcohol (Sutton, 2004).

One of the most-known cases, Washington State v. Letourneau (2000), involved a Seattle elementary school teacher, Mary Kay Letourneau. Married with four children, Letourneau began a sexual relationship with her sixth-grade student, Vili Fualaau, in 1996. She was arrested in 1997. Letourneau was pregnant with their child and was sentenced to six months in jail. Letourneau was found 30 days after her release by authorities with Fualaau in a parked car after no contact with her former student was ordered. She was arrested for having sex with a minor and served seven and a half years in prison (Sutton, 2004).

In 2013, Cristina Preston, a former special education teacher at Veterans Memorial Middle School in Columbus, Georgia, was convicted of aggravated child molestation, child molestation, statutory rape, and sexual assault of person in custody and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Preston, who was forty-five years old at the time of her conviction, was accused of starting a sexual affair in 2011 with a male student who was thirteen years old at the time (Chitwood, 2013).

Penalties for Misconduct. Penalties for educators who engage in sexual misconduct with their students range greatly by state. In 2020, seventeen states classified this behavior as a felony, but the rest either did not classify the punishment or classified it as a misdemeanor. Fines topped at $300,000, but most states implemented fines between ten and twenty thousand dollars. Prison sentences were typically imposed for those convicted, but the amount of time was not consistent across states. Twenty states, however, required educators to register as sex offenders if they were convicted of sexual misconduct (Abboud et al., 2020).

Keeping Track of Misconduct. If misconduct has been committed, most states have a complaint process. Complaints can be filed with state education departments. Complaints will be followed up by the department, and if substantial evidence is found, disciplinary action will be pursued ("Professional misconduct," 2004). As Sutton says, "all states require some form of criminal background checks as part of the screening process for certifying or hiring teacher candidates" (Sutton, 2004, p. 8). The Washington State Supreme Court ruled in 1990 in Brouillet v. Cowles Publishing Co. that records of teacher sexual misconduct shall be open to public inspection and that revealing them does not violate teacher privacy" (O'Hagan & Willmsen, 2003, ¶ 14).

If the complaint of misconduct is made at the school or district level, the school district's policy regarding misconduct should be handled for reporting, grievance, and investigation procedures. Reacting quickly may shield the school district from legal liability. School districts could even incur civil damages from the Department of Education or individual citizens under the Title IX law if the district fails to acknowledge implications of sexual misconduct or fails to create its own sexual misconduct policies (Goorian, 1999).

Most school districts require that employees report to their superintendent once they have been "charged by summons, warrant, indictment or information with the commission of a felony; a misdemeanor involving: sexual assault; obscenity and related offenses, drugs; physical or sexual abuse or neglect of a child; public drunkenness; driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs; reckless driving; or disturbing the peace" (Newport News Public Schools, 2007, p. 26).

The National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Licensing keeps a national database of actions on teacher licenses; however, it is available only for members. States such as Ohio, Texas, Vermont, and Florida offer online versions. Texas and Ohio's data bases are intended primarily for administrators to use in the hiring of new teachers. Most states collect such information and make it available through an open-records request (Honawar, 2007). According to the Department of Education, "students in the fiscal year 2022 reported the highest volume of discrimination and sexual harassment complaints in the history of the department's Office for Civil Rights." However, this number also included sexual harassment amongst students (Cauchi, 2023).

Viewpoints

Problems with the Misconduct Reporting System. According to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, there have been hundreds of Florida teachers kept in the classroom although they have molested, physically attacked, or harassed students at previous jobs. The article revealed that when schools find a teacher to be involved in misconduct, they will quietly allow them to resign instead of firing them. Many teachers can find a new job, and some repeat the same misconduct in another school (as cited in Marshall, 2007).

In 1990, a New York teacher of special education "was convicted of selling $7,000 worth of cocaine and was sent to prison. It took another two years before the New York City Board of Education finally fired the teacher after a year-long hearing that cost $185,000. New York spends on average nearly $200,000 and 476 days on each teacher dismissal hearing (Weele, 1994). According to a New York State Education Department report obtained by Gannett's Journal News, in 2011, the teacher dismissal hearing process took an average of 632 days for a guilty decision, 1,070 days for a not-guilty decision, and 287 days for settlements (Matthews, 2012). Some point to the teacher unions as the problem of ridding the system of bad teachers. The Chicago Teacher's Union attorneys argue "that a union's job is to protect its members" (Weele, 1994). It does not hire incompetent teachers and administrators must follow due-process procedures.

C. Edward Lawrence, author of the Marginal Teacher and How to Handle Staff Misconduct, does not agree with the advocates who want everything public when an allegation is made: the accusation, the investigation, findings and how the matter was or will be resolved. He believes that during an internal disciplinary action that teacher privacy must be respected. If everything is made public, reputations will be destroyed (as cited in Lemberg, 2004).

Additionally, students, especially those who are particularly young, may not report the incident to authorities for various reasons that include misconceptions about their relationship with school staff, intimidation, feelings of shame or responsibility, and gender expectations (Spakowski & Crespi, 2017).

Preventing Educator Sexual Misconduct. Teachers and administrators must: "take rumors, whispers, and oblique complaints, particularly from students, seriously. Because socializing with students may be an appropriate means of establishing rapport, it is important to have district-wide policies in place that ensure prompt, professional investigation of complaints and incidents to determine their merit" (Goorian, 1999, p. 3).

Another problem is that sometimes teachers are asked to quietly resign or give up a license due to misconduct. These teachers are never disciplined and can teach in other school districts. Or, a principal will write a false letter of recommendation to "help" the teacher leave the district (Zemel, 1999). This eliminates paperwork and bad press for a school, but creates a cycle of abuse and victimization of children. One report found that the average offender would be passed through three school districts before being properly reprimanded and prosecuted for their misconduct. This could result in the abuse of seventy-three victims over a lifetime. Despite the increased publication of such cases and an increase in reporting, public school districts still lacked accountability in the early 2020s (Cauchi, 2023).

Researchers who have studied teacher sexual misconduct offer some ideas or recommendations to keep abusive teachers out of the classroom:

There should be no statute of limitations on charges from children in abuse cases.
Schools should be given access to registry of child abuse reports and a list of sex offenders.
Teacher applications should require disclosure of any prior dismissals, arrests, or outstanding warrants.
When teachers file for certification or when they apply for a job, both federal and state fingerprint checks should be completed.
School officials must write accurate recommendations. It should be a violation if principals write a false letter of recommendation to rid the school of a bad teacher.
Lawsuits should be easier for victims to file.
Educator misconduct should be included in introductory college courses, and student teachers should have better educator misconduct training.
All school districts should write rules against educator sexual misconduct and inappropriate educator-student relationships, including those between staff and students that may be consensual. The behavior of the misconduct needs to be clear and concise within the policy so no ambiguity can be detected.
Educators should be trained to discern the signs of educator sexual misconduct.
Educator sexual misconduct information should be stored in a centralized place, and a case coordinator should be assigned.
Both the child protection and law enforcement agencies should be told of allegations (Shakeshaft, 2004, p. 47).

Conclusions

Clearly, educator sexual misconduct is a problem in public schools, and children's lives and well-being are at stake. Research has shown that students involved in such instances of sexual misconduct, especially at a young age, often face greater risks of issues such as drug abuse, relationship struggles, and poor mental health (Spakowski & Crespi, 2017). Misconduct ranges from watching inappropriate movies with students to sexually abusing a student. The sexual misconduct charges make news headlines and schools scramble to make policies that are ultimately shaped by the court system. Sexual abusers exist in schools, and they must be stopped by fellow educators, parents, and administrators. Public schools can work harder to prevent misconduct by following the recommendations of experts in the field and by making and following policies on educator misconduct.

However, when investigations ensue, it is important that they are quick and thorough. Opening everything to the media, such as the accusation, the investigation, the findings and how the matter was or will be resolved can have disastrous repercussions if the educator is found to be innocent. Teachers who harm or commit misconduct should be disciplined, but innocent teachers should be protected from being charged and labeled.

Teaching is a tough but rewarding profession. Most educators are professional, kind, and caring. Districts need to make and follow policies for the protection of all involved and to keep sexual misconduct from occurring in schools.

Terms & Concepts

Disciplinary Action: A disciplinary action can be taken when educator misconduct occurs, and the investigation proves that the misconduct was committed. It can include censure (a formal reprimand that is an expression of strong disapproval or harsh criticism), and suspension (postponement of sentence: a delay in the carrying out of a sentence or the making of a decision or judgment), probationary terms (under terms not final or fully worked out or agreed upon), and/or licenses revoked (educator license is taken away).

Grooming: Grooming is usually a deliberate action that is intended to befriend and establish an emotional attachment and coercion over a student. This results in the lowering of a child's inhibitions, making it easier for his or her sexual abuse.

Liable: Liable is the state of being responsible or obligated. Therefore, a person or organization can be liable for negligence, carrying out an act that they were contracted to do, or for commission of a crime. When the responsibility or obligation is not met to the expected standard, a lawsuit can result, leading to potential criminal prosecution.

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB): This federal act by Congress amended the mandate in Section 5414 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), directing that the issue of sexual misconduct be explored.

Sexual Misconduct: Sexual misconduct is any inappropriate behavior by an educator or school staff member that is aimed toward a student or minor. Usually, the behavior is used as a means to sexually arouse either the educator or the child. The behaviors can be physical, verbal, or visual.

Staff or Educator Misconduct: Staff or educator misconduct is wrongful educator behavior, inappropriate acts, deliberate wrongful acts, or omission.

Statute of Limitations: A statute of limitation is the period in which legal action can be taken.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972: This amendment does not directly deal with educator sexual misconduct or pedophilia. However, it bans any discrimination on the basis of sex in any organization that receives federal money (Sutton, 2004, p. 7).

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Sexual Misconduct in the Schools

On this Page

Subject Terms

Sexual Misconduct in the Schools

Abstract

Overview

Examples of Misconduct in the Media

Further Insights

Viewpoints

Conclusions

Terms & Concepts

Bibliography

Suggested Reading