S1: Bonus Ep 2 - Educator Sexual Misconduct

sexual misconduct is. Sexual misconduct is a range of verbal, visual and a tory and physical behaviors that are sexualized in her actions with students in schools, anything from language to students that is sexualized, asking them what they like to do for sex, what kind of sex do they like? Two things that are visual, for instance, masturbating in front of students, never touching them, but masturbating in front of them, or disrobing in front of them, or sending them pictures

of penises or breasts or vaginas. And then physical assault issues like forced sex or in terms of miners, it may not be for six they're miners. They may be confused. They're often told the person loves them and cares for them, and they're going to get married and things are going to be Okay, that's doctor Cheryl Shakeshaft. She's a professor of educational leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author

of a congressionally mandated report an educator see Misconduct. She's been studying school employee sexual misconduct for more than twenty five years. Our team reached out to her to learn more about the problem. Doctor Shakeshaft believes schools have not done nearly enough to prevent educat or sexual misconduct, and that the onus is often on the children to report.

We have received so many emails with similar stories to Rachel's, we thought it was important to raise awareness to help students, parents and schools be aware to avoid predators like Spencer. We have expected the children to be the people who police the school and prevent things from happening, so we give them training about good touch, bad touch, nothing wrong

with that. They should know those things absolutely, but adults also need to know exactly what they should do when they see things, when things are going on, when their bystanders and stuff happens in front of them. They need training to be able to understand what that means, not just say, oh, he's just a friendly teacher. He hugs all the kids, or she just really likes her students, and yes, she goes out of her way for them.

You know, they need to understand what the boundaries are, that nobody gets to cross those boundaries, and that if you see boundary crossing, you're reported. And then the people who gets reported to need to understand that if there's a report, you need to actually do something. You need to in most cases call the police and have an investigation. And sometimes even well meaning teachers don't understand the dynamics

of teachers who engage in sexual misconduct. We heard from a teacher who joined the staff at Kel High School after Spencer Hearn was arrested, and one of his comments really stood out. He wrote, many teachers at Kel would tell me it didn't really believe the charges, or that every story has two sides, and it really made me feel uncomfortable because of the deplorable charges. I found it odd that so many employees were complacent are passive about

the story. In schools, they often allowed teachers to break rules, taking students in their cars, being alone with students behind closed and locked doors in their rooms. Teachers see things of their colleagues, and they don't respond. I asked teachers, did you see anything, and they say, yes, I did. It was you know, really irregular and not allowed behavior. And then I say that the teacher will did you

report it? And the teacher will say, well know, And then I ask why and the teacher says, well, you know, if I was wrong, I might get a colleague in trouble, and I didn't want to do that, and it's kind of awkward, you know, we're friendly, and I I just didn't report. I've never heard a teacher say yes, I reported, and I reported because even if I'm wrong, I wanted to make sure that if something was happening, somebody was

looking into us. So the issue is that in schools we don't do anything, and by not doing anything, by not using prevention methods, we enable those people who either intend to abuse or come around to abusing, because they start crossing boundary after boundary after boundary, and pretty soon there they are. We enable them. It's like having roads with no stop signs. Perhaps futures don't know what they

should say. We need to practice the language of reporting, just get people familiar with it instead of saying, oh, I don't think this is really real. I mean, I'm probably making something out of nothing. I mean, it's just well, you know, I really hate to bring this up, saying Harold has this classroom across the hall from me, and I see him there regularly alone with individual students. It

concerns me. Or I saw Janine having dinner with one of her students and they were sitting really close together. I'm concerned. We need to teach people to just give information and then somebody to take the next step and investigate. We ask doctor Shatschaft, how can we change that thinking and culture in schools. Every school should have training, training about patterns and what happens and what you're supposed to

do as an adult. Every school should have a set of behaviors so that people understand what's acceptable and what's not acceptable between adults and students. Many kids just think that it's okay. They say, if this weren't okay, somebody would have stopped it. Everybody sees how he acts or how she acts, so kids don't really understand, and they think of it as dating. They don't understand the issues. So the kids see it, the kids talk about it,

they see it. They know stuff's going on, but they don't report it because they don't code it as something that is supposed to be reported because no one's ever taught them. Doctor Shakeshaft explains that there is training for sexual harassment, but schools could do more. When you ask most schools and if they have training, they say, yes,

we have training. And then when you ask to see the training, what you see is either training about sexual harassment peer to peer, So the adults get training about not harassing one of their colleagues, kids get training about not harassing one of their peers, but neither get training about the adult sexually harassing the student. Or they get trained on mandated reporting. But mandated reporting training is about reporting things that happen outside the school, not inside the school.

What else could schools do. We need people who walk through the cafeteria at lunchtime and look at what adults and students are doing. People who when they walk down the halls are looking at adult and student interaction. When they go by a classroom door, looking in and seeing what's going on when it's before school and after school and the classroom's empty, checking the classroom, seeing what's happened. We need people who are on the move and looking

for the right things. It isn't that people don't walk down the halls, but they aren't looking at adult to student interactions. They're looking for some student who's misbehavior. They're not looking for these things. So we need supervisory behavior. When you hear a rumor, even if it's abstract, we need people who will investigate. And on the occasions someone does report it, the investigation often doesn't go far enough. They tend to call the teacher in and say are

you having sex with Anne Marie? And the teacher says no, and the person says, okay, thank you, I didn't think so. And then the teacher steps out and texts and Marie and says, erase everything off your phone, and if you get called in, tell them nothing's going on, and that's the end of it. They don't follow up in super vision. They don't follow up and tried to see what's happening. They don't do an investigation, they don't ask the friends, they don't do anything. One of our listeners shared a

story that still upsets her years later. She tried to do the right thing. She wrote, I was a sophomore in high school and one of my teachers used to hit on me and tell me very inappropriate things, for instance, how he would rather have me beside him in his bed instead of his wife. Nothing physical ever happened. It was all verbal and the mental toll it had on me, it was so much more than my teenage mind could take.

He would follow me in the hallways. I couldn't take it anymore and broke down in tears to my mother and told her everything. We went to the school and told the principle everything. He seemed skeptical. I was brought in the next day for questioning. Needless to say, nothing happened and he was slapped with a week off. When he came back, it was worse because now he demanded to know why I said anything. So what should happen? Call the police and have an investigation. That's what you

need to do. And what else does doctor shakeshaf feel is non negotiable. No sharing phone numbers, no sharing social media, no having friends on Facebook, no TikTok, no Instagram, no nothing. School districts are supposed to have email that are monitored. They can have texting systems that are monitored, so that you're using the monitored texting systems for the school. There are lots of ways to do electronic communication with students when you need to, that are monitored by schools and

are therefore safe. Now that doesn't mean somebody might not also use their telephone, but we should at least start with the rule that no, you can't use your personal telephone number. You can't use your personal telephone number for texting, or your personal email or your personal social media. School districts have Facebook social media pages, they have other things where if you want to make an announcement to your students, you want to do whatever, you can do it there.

And we can't just say this one time at the beginning of the school year. It needs to be messaged over and over again. It is a simple rule and it should be followed, and it should be followed with bink stigns up all over the place and little pop ups that come up and other things to remind people. Don't give out your telephone number to an adult in the school, don't give out your telephone number to a student in school. Don't text. We need to change the patterns.

Doctor Shakeshaft understands how much we put on our teachers. I was a teacher and I thought, this job's the hardest job I've ever had. It was wonderful, but it's hard work. And so I don't want to slam the teachers for that. Yeah, they're busy, but it is a school culture problem. If you have a school culture that's

the culture of students safe first. And these are the things we do, and we talk about it and we share our strategies and we bring it up and we don't bury it, and we don't just say, hey, we've got a handbook and policies, read them and then tell people that's training, which it's not. You know, we can change a culture where we say we don't cross kids boundaries. That's behavior that's not acceptable. Here, the Betrayal Team thanks

doctor Shakeshaft for her insight into educator sexual misconduct. There are new developments in Jennifer's story and we'll share them with you in an additional bonus episode soon