Cambridge, MASSACHUSETTS

When a gay activist complains about sexual abuse by a priest, the media respond like cocaine addicts to a line of white powder on a tabletop mirror. It's another story when students have their own tales of abuse.

June 8, 2008 - Daniel Weinreb is the lone protestor outside of Buckingham, Brown & Nichols, the exclusive Cambridge, MA, school.

He wants school administrators to openly acknowledge and investigate the sexual abuse he and others endured more than a decade ago at the hands of former teacher Edward "Ted" Washburn. The school doesn't need to fear lawsuits. The statute of limitations has long since run out.

Weintraub was 13 when he says Washburn asked him to perform a sexual act as he watched. Washburn pleaded guilty to raping his own nephew in 1987. Weintraub testified about his own abuse at the hands of Washburn at the trial. The educator was given a suspended sentence, ordered to continue psychotherapy, do 1,000 hours of community service, and stay away from boys age 16 and under.

It was a huge scandal. Washburn's father was the late Bradford Washburn, well-known explorer and director emeritus of the Boston Museum of Science.

Weintraub wants the school to improve efforts to find out if other students were victimized by Washburn, communicate with alumni about those efforts, and offer possible victims a weekend retreat with counseling.
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TT - Not mentioned in the article was Weintraub's website Opening BB Minds where he is trying to get in touch with other alumni and other victims. He posts their testimonials as well as letters from former faculty members.

At TT, we have a category called "Delayed Justice" for those students who have the maturity, determination and the courage to confront their abusers. Even if the abusers spend 50 hours behind bars after their conviction, it is a victory for the victim to have the truth established.

Because if we fail to do establish truth, we can find no solutions and justice becomes a whim.

Teachers have been having sex with students for a long time without recognition of the scale of the problem. In 2001, it was not difficult to find a news story a day about sexual abuse by an educator. That was when far fewer newspapers were online. Even today, we estimate that we only get 10-15% of the stories.

We know that because we visit teacher licensing boards and Boards of Education and local school boards where disciplinary actions include revocation or surrender of a license by a teacher and the surrender is not due to conviction, but is still listed as sexual misconduct with a student. That's because the age of consent is 16 in most states and teacher-student sex has been criminalized in slightly more than half the states.

Most states do not list their disciplinary actions against teacher licenses online, although states like New York list actions against 38 other professions. Educrats don't want the public to know.

Or other states.

When a Florida newspaper filed a public records request for a copy of the NASDTEC database, they summarized the Clearinghouse database of those teachers whose disciplinary actions were reported to the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification. The database has been cited for decades as the means of assuring that teachers who lost their licenses in one state would not work in other states. New York had about the same number as South Carolina - 897 and 896. In 27 years.

Until every state posts disciplinary actions against teachers' licenses, as does Florida and a few others, parents can't know and won't know about the problem because it isn't a hot button media issue. You can readily see the difference in the number of stories out of Florida. This isn't because they have the most sexually active teachers. It's because of the Saratoga Herald-Tribune series raised awareness to the level where administrators are fearful of not reporting.

The quietly-negotiated surrender keeps the teacher out of the classroom, but it does nothing to help illuminate the problem so we can find a solution, so that we can get on with fighting a battle to make educrats accountable for the billions they spend every year.

And it delays the hopes of every parent for a decent education for the child, one that they thought they were paying for.