The young teacher hung his head, avoiding eye contact. Yes, he had touched a fifth-grader’s breast during recess. “I guess it was just lust of the flesh,” he told his boss.
That got Gary C. Lindsey fired from his first teaching job in Oelwein, Iowa. But it didn’t end his career. He taught for decades in Illinois and Iowa, fending off at least a half-dozen more abuse accusations.
When he finally surrendered his teaching license in 2004 ”” 40 years after that first little girl came forward ”” it wasn’t a principal or a state agency that ended his career. It was one persistent victim and her parents.
Lindsey’s case is just a small example of a widespread problem in American schools: sexual misconduct by the very teachers who are supposed to be nurturing the nation’s children.
Students in America’s schools are groped. They’re raped. They’re pursued, seduced and think they’re in love.
An Associated Press investigation found more than 2,500 cases over five years in which educators were punished for actions from bizarre to sadistic.
Scripture tells us that “you cannot serve two masters, [you] will hate the one and love the other”. Public schools are founded on the idiotic premise that teachers can be held accountable to both the state and their pupils. Not so. Government provides their pay, and to government they are accountable.
Oh for more private and parochial schools. Schools where an incident like the above results in either the firing of the teacher or a mass exodus of customers from the school.
Here is a link to the Federal Dept of Education’s report ons sexual misconduct
http://www.ed.gov/rschstat/research/pubs/misconductreview/report.pdf
POLICY AND PROGRAM STUDIES SERVICE
Educator Sexual Misconduct:
A Synthesis of Existing Literature