Speaker 1: I'm under a gunning and this is betrayal. Bonus Episode
Speaker 1: two Educator sexual Misconduct. We've addressed betrayal in various ways
Speaker 1: during the series, and we've heard from many of you
Speaker 1: that personally identified with Rachel, the victim that spends our
Speaker 1: Hearin was convicted of sexually assaulting at Kel High School.
Speaker 1: During our production, we've learned more about how pervasive educator
Speaker 1: sexual misconduct is. Sexual misconduct is a range of verbal,
Speaker 1: visual and a tory and physical behaviors that are sexualized
Speaker 1: in her actions with students in schools, anything from language
Speaker 1: to students that is sexualized, asking them what they like
Speaker 1: to do for sex, what kind of sex do they like?
Speaker 1: Two things that are visual, for instance, masturbating in front
Speaker 1: of students, never touching them, but masturbating in front of them,
Speaker 1: or disrobing in front of them, or sending them pictures
Speaker 1: of penises or breasts or vaginas. And then physical assault
Speaker 1: issues like forced sex or in terms of miners, it
Speaker 1: may not be for six they're miners. They may be confused.
Speaker 1: They're often told the person loves them and cares for them,
Speaker 1: and they're going to get married and things are going
Speaker 1: to be Okay, that's doctor Cheryl Shakeshaft. She's a professor
Speaker 1: of educational leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author
Speaker 1: of a congressionally mandated report an educator see Misconduct. She's
Speaker 1: been studying school employee sexual misconduct for more than twenty
Speaker 1: five years. Our team reached out to her to learn
Speaker 1: more about the problem. Doctor Shakeshaft believes schools have not
Speaker 1: done nearly enough to prevent educat or sexual misconduct, and
Speaker 1: that the onus is often on the children to report.
Speaker 1: We have received so many emails with similar stories to Rachel's,
Speaker 1: we thought it was important to raise awareness to help students,
Speaker 1: parents and schools be aware to avoid predators like Spencer.
Speaker 1: We have expected the children to be the people who
Speaker 1: police the school and prevent things from happening, so we
Speaker 1: give them training about good touch, bad touch, nothing wrong
Speaker 1: with that. They should know those things absolutely, but adults
Speaker 1: also need to know exactly what they should do when
Speaker 1: they see things, when things are going on, when their
Speaker 1: bystanders and stuff happens in front of them. They need
Speaker 1: training to be able to understand what that means, not
Speaker 1: just say, oh, he's just a friendly teacher. He hugs
Speaker 1: all the kids, or she just really likes her students,
Speaker 1: and yes, she goes out of her way for them.
Speaker 1: You know, they need to understand what the boundaries are,
Speaker 1: that nobody gets to cross those boundaries, and that if
Speaker 1: you see boundary crossing, you're reported. And then the people
Speaker 1: who gets reported to need to understand that if there's
Speaker 1: a report, you need to actually do something. You need
Speaker 1: to in most cases call the police and have an investigation.
Speaker 1: And sometimes even well meaning teachers don't understand the dynamics
Speaker 1: of teachers who engage in sexual misconduct. We heard from
Speaker 1: a teacher who joined the staff at Kel High School
Speaker 1: after Spencer Hearn was arrested, and one of his comments
Speaker 1: really stood out. He wrote, many teachers at Kel would
Speaker 1: tell me it didn't really believe the charges, or that
Speaker 1: every story has two sides, and it really made me
Speaker 1: feel uncomfortable because of the deplorable charges. I found it
Speaker 1: odd that so many employees were complacent are passive about
Speaker 1: the story. In schools, they often allowed teachers to break rules,
Speaker 1: taking students in their cars, being alone with students behind
Speaker 1: closed and locked doors in their rooms. Teachers see things
Speaker 1: of their colleagues, and they don't respond. I asked teachers,
Speaker 1: did you see anything, and they say, yes, I did.
Speaker 1: It was you know, really irregular and not allowed behavior.
Speaker 1: And then I say that the teacher will did you
Speaker 1: report it? And the teacher will say, well know, And
Speaker 1: then I ask why and the teacher says, well, you know,
Speaker 1: if I was wrong, I might get a colleague in trouble,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to do that, and it's kind
Speaker 1: of awkward, you know, we're friendly, and I I just
Speaker 1: didn't report. I've never heard a teacher say yes, I reported,
Speaker 1: and I reported because even if I'm wrong, I wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure that if something was happening, somebody was
Speaker 1: looking into us. So the issue is that in schools
Speaker 1: we don't do anything, and by not doing anything, by
Speaker 1: not using prevention methods, we enable those people who either
Speaker 1: intend to abuse or come around to abusing, because they
Speaker 1: start crossing boundary after boundary after boundary, and pretty soon
Speaker 1: there they are. We enable them. It's like having roads
Speaker 1: with no stop signs. Perhaps futures don't know what they
Speaker 1: should say. We need to practice the language of reporting,
Speaker 1: just get people familiar with it instead of saying, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't think this is really real. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: probably making something out of nothing. I mean, it's just well,
Speaker 1: you know, I really hate to bring this up, saying
Speaker 1: Harold has this classroom across the hall from me, and
Speaker 1: I see him there regularly alone with individual students. It
Speaker 1: concerns me. Or I saw Janine having dinner with one
Speaker 1: of her students and they were sitting really close together.
Speaker 1: I'm concerned. We need to teach people to just give
Speaker 1: information and then somebody to take the next step and investigate.
Speaker 1: We ask doctor Shatschaft, how can we change that thinking
Speaker 1: and culture in schools. Every school should have training, training
Speaker 1: about patterns and what happens and what you're supposed to
Speaker 1: do as an adult. Every school should have a set
Speaker 1: of behaviors so that people understand what's acceptable and what's
Speaker 1: not acceptable between adults and students. Many kids just think
Speaker 1: that it's okay. They say, if this weren't okay, somebody
Speaker 1: would have stopped it. Everybody sees how he acts or
Speaker 1: how she acts, so kids don't really understand, and they
Speaker 1: think of it as dating. They don't understand the issues.
Speaker 1: So the kids see it, the kids talk about it,
Speaker 1: they see it. They know stuff's going on, but they
Speaker 1: don't report it because they don't code it as something
Speaker 1: that is supposed to be reported because no one's ever
Speaker 1: taught them. Doctor Shakeshaft explains that there is training for
Speaker 1: sexual harassment, but schools could do more. When you ask
Speaker 1: most schools and if they have training, they say, yes,
Speaker 1: we have training. And then when you ask to see
Speaker 1: the training, what you see is either training about sexual
Speaker 1: harassment peer to peer, So the adults get training about
Speaker 1: not harassing one of their colleagues, kids get training about
Speaker 1: not harassing one of their peers, but neither get training
Speaker 1: about the adult sexually harassing the student. Or they get
Speaker 1: trained on mandated reporting. But mandated reporting training is about
Speaker 1: reporting things that happen outside the school, not inside the school.
Speaker 1: What else could schools do. We need people who walk
Speaker 1: through the cafeteria at lunchtime and look at what adults
Speaker 1: and students are doing. People who when they walk down
Speaker 1: the halls are looking at adult and student interaction. When
Speaker 1: they go by a classroom door, looking in and seeing
Speaker 1: what's going on when it's before school and after school
Speaker 1: and the classroom's empty, checking the classroom, seeing what's happened.
Speaker 1: We need people who are on the move and looking
Speaker 1: for the right things. It isn't that people don't walk
Speaker 1: down the halls, but they aren't looking at adult to
Speaker 1: student interactions. They're looking for some student who's misbehavior. They're
Speaker 1: not looking for these things. So we need supervisory behavior.
Speaker 1: When you hear a rumor, even if it's abstract, we
Speaker 1: need people who will investigate. And on the occasions someone
Speaker 1: does report it, the investigation often doesn't go far enough.
Speaker 1: They tend to call the teacher in and say are
Speaker 1: you having sex with Anne Marie? And the teacher says no,
Speaker 1: and the person says, okay, thank you, I didn't think so.
Speaker 1: And then the teacher steps out and texts and Marie
Speaker 1: and says, erase everything off your phone, and if you
Speaker 1: get called in, tell them nothing's going on, and that's
Speaker 1: the end of it. They don't follow up in super vision.
Speaker 1: They don't follow up and tried to see what's happening.
Speaker 1: They don't do an investigation, they don't ask the friends,
Speaker 1: they don't do anything. One of our listeners shared a
Speaker 1: story that still upsets her years later. She tried to
Speaker 1: do the right thing. She wrote, I was a sophomore
Speaker 1: in high school and one of my teachers used to
Speaker 1: hit on me and tell me very inappropriate things, for instance,
Speaker 1: how he would rather have me beside him in his
Speaker 1: bed instead of his wife. Nothing physical ever happened. It
Speaker 1: was all verbal and the mental toll it had on me,
Speaker 1: it was so much more than my teenage mind could take.
Speaker 1: He would follow me in the hallways. I couldn't take
Speaker 1: it anymore and broke down in tears to my mother
Speaker 1: and told her everything. We went to the school and
Speaker 1: told the principle everything. He seemed skeptical. I was brought
Speaker 1: in the next day for questioning. Needless to say, nothing
Speaker 1: happened and he was slapped with a week off. When
Speaker 1: he came back, it was worse because now he demanded
Speaker 1: to know why I said anything. So what should happen?
Speaker 1: Call the police and have an investigation. That's what you
Speaker 1: need to do. And what else does doctor shakeshaf feel
Speaker 1: is non negotiable. No sharing phone numbers, no sharing social media,
Speaker 1: no having friends on Facebook, no TikTok, no Instagram, no nothing.
Speaker 1: School districts are supposed to have email that are monitored.
Speaker 1: They can have texting systems that are monitored, so that
Speaker 1: you're using the monitored texting systems for the school. There
Speaker 1: are lots of ways to do electronic communication with students
Speaker 1: when you need to, that are monitored by schools and
Speaker 1: are therefore safe. Now that doesn't mean somebody might not
Speaker 1: also use their telephone, but we should at least start
Speaker 1: with the rule that no, you can't use your personal
Speaker 1: telephone number. You can't use your personal telephone number for texting,
Speaker 1: or your personal email or your personal social media. School
Speaker 1: districts have Facebook social media pages, they have other things
Speaker 1: where if you want to make an announcement to your students,
Speaker 1: you want to do whatever, you can do it there.
Speaker 1: And we can't just say this one time at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the school year. It needs to be messaged
Speaker 1: over and over again. It is a simple rule and
Speaker 1: it should be followed, and it should be followed with
Speaker 1: bink stigns up all over the place and little pop
Speaker 1: ups that come up and other things to remind people.
Speaker 1: Don't give out your telephone number to an adult in
Speaker 1: the school, don't give out your telephone number to a
Speaker 1: student in school. Don't text. We need to change the patterns.
Speaker 1: Doctor Shakeshaft understands how much we put on our teachers.
Speaker 1: I was a teacher and I thought, this job's the
Speaker 1: hardest job I've ever had. It was wonderful, but it's
Speaker 1: hard work. And so I don't want to slam the
Speaker 1: teachers for that. Yeah, they're busy, but it is a
Speaker 1: school culture problem. If you have a school culture that's
Speaker 1: the culture of students safe first. And these are the
Speaker 1: things we do, and we talk about it and we
Speaker 1: share our strategies and we bring it up and we
Speaker 1: don't bury it, and we don't just say, hey, we've
Speaker 1: got a handbook and policies, read them and then tell
Speaker 1: people that's training, which it's not. You know, we can
Speaker 1: change a culture where we say we don't cross kids boundaries.
Speaker 1: That's behavior that's not acceptable. Here, the Betrayal Team thanks
Speaker 1: doctor Shakeshaft for her insight into educator sexual misconduct. There
Speaker 1: are new developments in Jennifer's story and we'll share them
Speaker 1: with you in an additional bonus episode soon