Teacher gets 10 yrs for sex w/ student

I've enjoyed the mental sparing MicroBalrog

 

The mental challenge to think through an issue and present an argument. By the way, your english is fine.

 

Not if she's in Florida:
Teachers back on job after inappropriate acts
BY CHRIS DAVIS, MATTHEW DOIG AND TIFFANY LANKES
SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE

<TABLE id=facts_clear cellSpacing=2 cellPadding=5 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD vAlign=top width="100%">Matthew Herman has a problem. But it isn't finding a job.

For three years at South Broward High, the teacher subjected teen girls to his sexual aggression, state records show.

One girl said he tried to kiss her belly button. Two said he invited them home for sex. One later claimed he cornered her in a supply room, unbuckled his pants and asked her to "touch it, kiss it, or at least look at it."

The girls put up with it at first.
But they unleashed a flood of accusations after a student came forward with an especially troubling story - that Herman had dropped his pants when they were alone.

In all, state Department of Education officials investigated 20 allegations described by a half-dozen girls. Records show they believed every one.

Their decision?
Send Herman back to school.
Herman's story is not unusual.
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune spent two years investigating how school districts and the state Department of Education handle teachers who sexually harass and abuse or physically attack students.

It found that Florida's system to protect students malfunctions at every level, from schools to school districts to the highest levels of government in Tallahassee.

Even when state regulators believe teachers engage in the worst kind of behavior, they send them back to the classroom with no guarantee they will be monitored.

Often, even principals have no idea one of their teachers has been punished for abuse.

Education officials at every level do not know how many teachers have been investigated for sexual abuse or how many they have sent back to classrooms.

To find out, the Herald-Tribune reviewed the results of more than 14,000 teacher investigations going back as far as 1997.

The analysis shows that more than 300 teachers have been punished in recent years for sexual misconduct - molesting students, seducing them, having them pose nude or lavishing them with unwanted attention. Nearly 450 more physically attacked or verbally terrorized their students.

More than half of those teachers kept their license to teach. At least 150 are teaching in a Florida classroom today.

The actual number of questionable teachers in Florida schools is likely much larger because more than 70 percent of cases reported to the state are dismissed after a review by investigators who have little or no formal training.

Of the cases that don't get dropped, state officials close 9 in 10 with settlement deals that allow teachers to avoid admitting guilt. Those agreements keep cases moving through the system and also result in lighter penalties.

The Herald-Tribune obtained records that show investigators found probable cause that:

* Tara Wright had sex with two teenage boys when she taught English at Wymore Secondary School in Orange County. She now teaches second-graders in Hernando County.

* Over two years, Fleeta Harris sent a teenage boy in her Alachua County English class personal letters and poems, including one that began, "How do I love you, let me count the ..." Harris is teaching at Lake Weir Middle School in Marion County.

The Marion School District hired Harris, 59, in 2003. The veteran teacher, who holds master's and doctorate degrees, makes $53,170 as an eighth-grade English teacher.

Harris' work has been rated outstanding, according to her personnel file. She's had no situations like those in Alachua County.

School District spokesman Kevin Christian said Lake Weir Middle Principal Walt Miller had been aware of the Alachua County situation but believes she is a good teacher and not a threat to the students.

Harris could not be reached for comment.
Before 2004, principals interviewed and hired teachers. Because of a federal desegregation ruling in 2004, district administrators were ordered to hire all teachers and form a pool for principals to choose from.

Like Herman, Wright and Harris signed settlement agreements that kept them in school.

In a recent interview, Herman denied the allegations against him. When state officials offered him a deal, he gladly took it, he said.

"They made an offer and said, 'We'll get you back in the classroom,'Ê" Herman said. "What could I say? That's what I wanted to do."

The system is so flawed that just deciphering what constitutes teacher misconduct is difficult.

Lawmakers and state education officials use vague definitions, such as "moral turpitude" and "gross immorality," to describe what conduct is banned. Interpretations vary from district to district and even from principal to principal in the same county.

The Department of Education offers little help. It has an office of 12 investigators whose sole job is to gather enough evidence to punish bad teachers. But most came to their job with no experience conducting investigations, and the state has not required them to attend formal training.

Meanwhile, the government officials responsible for protecting schoolchildren say they are powerless to fix the problems.

Instead, they point fingers.
"The department is not leaving people in classrooms," said Pam Stewart, who, as deputy chancellor for educator quality, oversees the division that investigates teachers. "Districts are leaving people in classrooms. That's an important distinction with regard to what the process is."

James Notter, Broward County's interim superintendent, rejected that idea. He said school districts can't take a hard-line approach for a teacher like Herman if the state lets him keep his teaching certificate.

LIGHT PUNISHMENT
Tara Wright's story is a lesson in how things go wrong.

Newly minted as a teacher from Florida State University, she took her first job in 1996 as a teacher at the now-defunct Wymore Secondary School in Eatonville.

She took over the cheerleading squad, and her closeness to male basketball players prompted the first suspicions, according to Orange County district documents.

Her principal and several teachers warned her to stop driving students home. Rumors about meetings off-campus continued. Later, a boy told another teacher he had sex with Wright.

School officials took a statement from a boy who said he had sex with her. One father told school district investigators Wright had slept with all three of his sons.

She lost her job and district administrators forwarded the case to the Department of Education. It could have ended her career.

In Florida, principals and superintendents have the power to fire abusive teachers. But the Department of Education and its affiliated Education Practices Commission determine who can teach in Florida classrooms through the certification process.

The state can revoke a teacher's certificate for a range of actions. They rarely do.

When state investigators followed up on Wright's case - eight months after it was reported to them - the victims had moved away and the father refused to talk.

Investigators offered Wright a deal in 2000. They would retroactively "suspend" her certificate for the 1998-99 school year and place her certificate on probation. She became eligible to teach and, within a year, asked Hernando County schools for a job.

"I was never arrested and my certificate was not taken away," she wrote in a letter to the district. Wright told the Herald-Tribune last month that students had orchestrated lies about her sexual encounters.

A POOR EXCUSE
Florida's Department of Education dedicates an entire bureau to the oversight of teachers.

A dozen investigators and several attorneys travel the state to crack down on abusers.

Bureau Chief Marian Lambeth said there is little she can do to reduce the number of abusive teachers making it back into classrooms because of legal hurdles.

Often, state investigators don't have enough evidence to justify a revocation, Lambeth said.

To punish a teacher, the department must have "clear and convincing evidence" as determined by a judge. Building a case gets difficult when victims refuse to testify or witnesses are students with discipline problems.

But only a tiny fraction of cases actually get tested in administrative courts, and the state has a trump card to play if it chooses.

The department does not have to prove its most serious charges, said Harry Hooper, deputy chief judge at the Division of Administrative Hearings.

If the state cannot prove sexual or physical abuse, it can still revoke a certificate if it proves a teacher embarrassed a student or committed some lesser offense.

Lambeth and a group of top department officials told the Herald-Tribune last month they were largely happy with how the system was working.

Usually, a teacher's punishment fits the crime, then-Education Commissioner John Winn said. "I think we're on target a majority of the time."

In reality, education officials don't know how well they investigate teachers or if the state doles out appropriate punishment.

The state has a computerized system that tracks investigations into teachers going back to the 1970s. State Sen. Mike Bennett, a Republican from Bradenton, said the state's lack of tracking is "mind-boggling."

Like other states, Florida could use the database to track and help prevent abuse in schools. But state officials say they have not analyzed the database and its contents have remained largely secret.

It took the Herald-Tribune 14 months and repeated threats of legal action to obtain the database under Florida's public records law.

Even then, some information turned out to be so inaccurate that the newspaper decided to create its own version, reviewing 30,000 pages of administrative documents to build a database that for the first time showed that cases like Tara Wright's and Matthew Herman's are no fluke.

Of the nearly 3,000 teachers the state punished between 1997 and 2005, the Herald-Tribune classified more than 400 as sexual misconduct. Nearly half of those teachers are still allowed to teach.

The state is even more lenient on teachers who use violence against children. Only 10 percent of the physical abuse cases led to permanent revocation.

The actual number of questionable teachers in Florida schools is much larger because the vast majority of cases reported to the state are dismissed as unfounded.

Of the 14,000 cases closed against teachers since 2000, 10,000 cases - 71 percent - were dropped with no action taken. Those cases, while public record, are largely forgotten because they don't show up when a school district does a background check on a new hire.</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>

 

I pretty much agree with that. Here, most crimes have "guidelines" established by law that remove the judgement part of court workings. I guess, in the old days, a judge was allowed to use judgement, it seems that is no longer so. Why? To remove the uneven sentences for a given crime from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. A noble plan, but the courts are handcuffed. As soon as the sentence departs from the "guidelines" the grounds for appeal are laid, and the sentence will be adjusted by the appeals court, or the case will be sent back for retrial or resentencing to the lower courts. Too bad.

Another reason is that there are too many of us these days, and the judges are not as well qualified as they might be. We could do with fewer judges and lawyers, more common sense. (Wishing upon a star will be about as useful as waiting for that.)

 

I agree with MicroBalrog. A 13 year old is on the road toward responsibility but not there yet. I'm sure he knew it was wrong but the responsibility for allowing it to take place rests squarely with the adult.

 

I'm not saying that the child shouldn't be the recipient of some form of "?? punishment" (not really the right word) but I agree with MicroBalrod that responsibility in any encounters, of any kind, between adult and child rests with the adult. Is his age being used as an excuse for participation? You make a good point and I'm going to have to think about that one.