Speaker 1: I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal Bonus Episode two,
Speaker 1: Educator sexual Misconduct. We've addressed betrayal in various ways during
Speaker 1: the series, and we've heard from many of you that
Speaker 1: personally identified with Rachel, the victim that Spencer Heron was
Speaker 1: convicted of sexually assaulting at Kel High School. During our production,
Speaker 1: we've learned more about how pervasive educator sexual misconduct is.
Speaker 2: Sexual misconduct is a range of verbal, visual, and natory
Speaker 2: and physical behaviors that are sexualized. Interactions with students in schools,
Speaker 2: anything from language to students that is sexualized, asking them
Speaker 2: what they like to do for sex, what kind of
Speaker 2: sex do they like, to things that are visual, for instance,
Speaker 2: masturbating in front of students, never touching them, but masturbating
Speaker 2: in front of them, or disrobing in front of them,
Speaker 2: or sending them pictures of penises or breasts or vaginas,
Speaker 2: and then physical assault issues like forced sex, or in
Speaker 2: terms of miners, it may not be for sex. They're miners.
Speaker 2: They may be confused. They're often told the person loves
Speaker 2: them and cares for them, and they're going to get
Speaker 2: married and things are going to be okay.
Speaker 1: That's doctor Cheryl Shakeshaft. She's a professor of educational leadership
Speaker 1: at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of a congressionally
Speaker 1: mandated report an educators have misconduct. She's been studying school
Speaker 1: employees sexual misconduct for more than twenty five years. Our
Speaker 1: team reached out to her to learn more about the problem.
Speaker 1: Doctor Sheakeschaff believes schools have not done nearly enough to
Speaker 1: prevent educator sexual misconduct and that the onus is often
Speaker 1: on the children to report. We have received so many
Speaker 1: emails with similar stories to Rachel's, we thought it was
Speaker 1: important to raise awareness to help students, parents and schools
Speaker 1: be aware to avoid predators like Spencer.
Speaker 2: We have expected the children to be the people who
Speaker 2: police the school and prevent things from happening, so we
Speaker 2: give them training about good touch, bad touch. Nothing wrong
Speaker 2: with that. They should know those things absolutely, but adults
Speaker 2: also need to know exactly what they should do when
Speaker 2: they see things, when things are going on, when their
Speaker 2: bystanders and stuff happens in front of them. They need
Speaker 2: training to be able to understand what that means, you know,
Speaker 2: not just say, oh, he's just a friendly teacher. He
Speaker 2: hugs all the kids, or she just really likes her students,
Speaker 2: and yes, she goes out of her way for them.
Speaker 2: You know, they need to understand what the boundaries are,
Speaker 2: that nobody gets to cross those boundaries, and that if
Speaker 2: you see boundary crossing, you report it. And then the
Speaker 2: people who gets reported to need to understand that if
Speaker 2: there's a report, you need to actually do something. You
Speaker 2: need to in most cases call the police and have
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: He wrote, many.
Speaker 1: Teachers at Kel would tell me it didn't really believe
Speaker 1: the charges, or that every story has two sides, and
Speaker 1: it really made me feel uncomfortable because of deplorable charges.
Speaker 1: I found it odd that so many employees were complacent
Speaker 1: are passive about the story.
Speaker 2: In schools, they often allowed teachers to break rules, taking
Speaker 2: students in their cars, being alone with students behind closed
Speaker 2: and locked doors in their rooms. Teachers see things of
Speaker 2: their colleagues and they don't respond. I asked teachers did
Speaker 2: you see anything, and they say, yes, I did. It
Speaker 2: was you know, really irregular and not allowed behavior. And
Speaker 2: then I say to the teacher, will did you report it?
Speaker 2: And the teacher will say, well no, And then I
Speaker 2: ask why and the teacher says, well, you know, if
Speaker 2: I was wrong, I might get a colleague in trouble
Speaker 2: and I didn't want to do that, and it's kind
Speaker 2: of awkward, you know, we're friendly, and I just it
Speaker 2: just I just didn't report. I've never heard a teacher
Speaker 2: say yes, I reported, and I reported because even if
Speaker 2: I'm wrong, I wanted to make sure that if something
Speaker 2: was happening, somebody was looking into us. So the issue
Speaker 2: is that in schools we don't do anything, and by
Speaker 2: not doing anything, by not using prevention methods, we enable
Speaker 2: those people who either intend to abuse or come around
Speaker 2: to abusing, because they start crossing boundary after boundary after boundary,
Speaker 2: and pretty soon there they are. We enable them. It's
Speaker 2: like having roads with no stop signs.
Speaker 3: Perhaps teachers don't know what they should say.
Speaker 2: We need to practice the language of reporting, just get
Speaker 2: people familiar with it. Instead of saying I don't think
Speaker 2: this is really real. I mean I'm probably making something
Speaker 2: out of nothing. I mean, it's just well, you know,
Speaker 2: I really hate to bring this up, saying Harold has
Speaker 2: his classroom across the hall from me, and I see
Speaker 2: him there regularly alone with individual students. It concerns me.
Speaker 2: Or I saw Janine having dinner with one of her
Speaker 2: students and they were sitting really close together. I'm concerned.
Speaker 2: We need to teach people to just give information and
Speaker 2: then it's somebody to take the next step and investigate.
Speaker 1: We asked doctor Shee Schaft, how can we change that
Speaker 1: thinking and culture in schools.
Speaker 2: Every school should have training, training about patterns and what
Speaker 2: happens and what you're supposed to do as an adult.
Speaker 2: Every school should have a set of behaviors so that
Speaker 2: people understand what's acceptable and what's not acceptable between adults
Speaker 2: and students. Many kids just think that it's okay. They say,
Speaker 2: if this weren't okay, somebody would have stopped it. Everybody
Speaker 2: sees how he acts or how she acts, so kids
Speaker 2: don't really understand, and they think of it as dating.
Speaker 2: They don't understand the issues. So the kids see it,
Speaker 2: kids talk about it, they see it. They know stuff's
Speaker 2: going on, but they don't report it because they don't
Speaker 2: code it as something that is supposed to be reported
Speaker 2: because no one's ever taught them.
Speaker 1: Doctor Shakeshaft explains that there is training for sexual harassment,
Speaker 1: but schools could do more.
Speaker 2: When you ask most schools if they have training, they say, yes,
Speaker 2: we have training. And then when you ask to see
Speaker 2: the training, what you see is either training about sexual
Speaker 2: harassment peer to peers, so the adults get training about
Speaker 2: not harassing one of their colleagues, kids get training about
Speaker 2: not harassing one of their peers, but neither get training
Speaker 2: about the adult sexually harassing the student. Or they get
Speaker 2: trained on mandated reporting. But mandated reporting training is about
Speaker 2: reporting things that happen outside the school, not inside the school.
Speaker 3: What else could schools do.
Speaker 2: We need people who walk through the cafeteria at lunchtime
Speaker 2: and look at what adults and students are doing. People
Speaker 2: who when they walk down the halls are looking at
Speaker 2: adult and student interaction. When they go by a classroom door,
Speaker 2: looking in and seeing what's going on when it's before
Speaker 2: school and after school and the classroom's empty, checking the classroom,
Speaker 2: seeing what's happened. We need people who are on the
Speaker 2: move and looking for the right things. It isn't that
Speaker 2: people don't walk down the halls, but they aren't looking
Speaker 2: at adult as student interactions. They're looking for some student
Speaker 2: who's misbehavior. They're not looking for these things. So we
Speaker 2: need supervisory behavior. When you hear a rumor, even if
Speaker 2: it's abstract, we need people who will investigate.
Speaker 1: And on the occasions someone does report it, the investigation
Speaker 1: often doesn't go far enough.
Speaker 2: They tend to call the teacher in and say are
Speaker 2: you having sex with Anne Marie? And the teacher says no,
Speaker 2: and the person says, okay, thank you, I didn't think so.
Speaker 2: And then the teacher steps out and texts Anne Marie
Speaker 2: and says, erase everything off your phone, and if you
Speaker 2: get called in, tell them nothing's going on, and that's
Speaker 2: the end of it. They don't follow up in super vision.
Speaker 2: They don't follow up and try to see what's happening.
Speaker 2: They don't do an investigation, they don't ask the friends,
Speaker 2: they don't do anything.
Speaker 1: One of our listeners shared a story that still upsets
Speaker 1: her years later.
Speaker 3: She tried to do the right thing.
Speaker 1: She wrote, I was a sophomore in high school and
Speaker 1: one of my teachers used to hit on me and
Speaker 1: tell me very inappropriate things, for instance, how he would
Speaker 1: rather have me beside him in his bed instead of
Speaker 1: his wife. Nothing physical ever happened. It was all verbal
Speaker 1: and the mental toll it had on me. It was
Speaker 1: so much more than my teenage mind could take. He
Speaker 1: would follow me in the hallways. I couldn't take it
Speaker 1: anymore and broke down in tears to my mother and
Speaker 1: told her everything. We went to the school and told
Speaker 1: the principal everything. He seemed skeptical. I was brought in
Speaker 1: the next day for questioning. Needless to say, nothing.
Speaker 3: Happened and he was slapped with a week off.
Speaker 1: When he came back, it was worse because now he
Speaker 1: demanded to know why are I said anything?
Speaker 3: So what should happen?
Speaker 2: Call the police and have an investigation. That's what you
Speaker 2: need to do.
Speaker 1: And what else does doctor sheikschaff feel is non negotiable.
Speaker 2: No sharing phone numbers, no sharing social media, no having
Speaker 2: friends on Facebook, no TikTok, no Instagram, no nothing. School
Speaker 2: districts are supposed to have email that are monitored. They
Speaker 2: can have texting systems that are monitored, so that you're
Speaker 2: using the monitored texting systems for the school. There are
Speaker 2: lots of ways to do electronic communication with students when
Speaker 2: you need to, that are monitored by schools and are
Speaker 2: therefore safe. Now that doesn't mean somebody might not also
Speaker 2: use their telephone, but we should at least start with
Speaker 2: the rule that no, you can't use your personal telephone number.
Speaker 2: You can't use your personal telephone number for texting, or
Speaker 2: your personal email or your personal social media. School districts
Speaker 2: have Facebook social media pages, they have other things where
Speaker 2: if you want to make an announcement to your students,
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 3: It needs to be messaged over and over again.
Speaker 2: It is a simple rule and it should be followed,
Speaker 2: and it should be followed with big signs up all
Speaker 2: over the place and little pop ups that come up
Speaker 2: and other things to remind people. Don't give out your
Speaker 2: telephone number to an adult in the school, don't give
Speaker 2: out your telephone number to a student in school. Don't text.
Speaker 2: We need to change the patterns.
Speaker 1: Doctor Shakeschaff understands how much we put on our teachers.
Speaker 2: I was a teacher and I thought This job's the
Speaker 2: hardest job I've ever had. It was wonderful, but it's
Speaker 2: hard work. And so I don't want to slam the
Speaker 2: teachers for that. Yeah, they're busy, but it is a
Speaker 2: school culture problem. If you have a school culture that's
Speaker 2: the culture of students safe use first, and these are
Speaker 2: the things we do, and we talk about it, and
Speaker 2: we share our strategies and we bring it up and
Speaker 2: we don't bury it, and we don't just say, hey,
Speaker 2: we've got a handbook and policies, read them and then
Speaker 2: tell people that's training, which it's not. You know, we
Speaker 2: can change a culture where we say we don't cross
Speaker 2: kids boundaries. That's behavior that's not acceptable. Here.
Speaker 1: The Betrayal Team thanks doctor Shakeshaft for insight into educator
Speaker 1: sexual misconduct. There are new developments in Jennifer's story and
Speaker 1: we'll share them with you in an additional bonus episode
Speaker 1: soon