STORY OF THE DAY
One teacher said, "I know that I can't rely on my employer to protect kids."
June 4, 2008 - From the Seattle Times: School's culture failed to stop abuser, written by Jonathan Martin and Ken Armstrong was described by The Oregonian as an "outrage story."
From the Seattle Times' story:
In April, Seattle Public Schools settled a lawsuit filed on behalf of two of Hill's victims for $3 million. Depositions, personnel files and other records from that lawsuit expose a school's culture of fear and confusion, and they explain how Hill managed to remain a teacher for so long.Read the whole thing.
At least 30 times since the late 1980s, teachers and staff warned administrators at North Seattle's Broadview-Thomson Elementary School of their suspicions about Hill, lawyers for the two girls say. The Seattle School District disputes that figure but does admit to five warnings.
State law requires school personnel to report suspected abuse to police or Child Protective Services, but teachers kept their concerns in-house, hewing to a school policy that says go to an administrator. Once passed along, their complaints almost always died, with no investigation, no discipline, no calls to outside investigators.
Teachers who'd witnessed Hill's troubling behavior struggled with what to do. And, due to principals' lax documentation, their concerns weren't pieced together to reveal Hill for what he was.
Hill, now 58, left behind a host of teachers disillusioned about their school district — and fearful the same thing could happen again. One teacher, Mollie Boswell, said later: "I know that I can't rely on my employer to protect kids."
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TT - The story is by no means an isolated case because we have seen it repeated over and over again in one variant or another. It's the reason why school districts pay out millions to victims and their families. Because they have to. Usually, however, you don't find out what the school did that caused them to be liable. And, convenient for them, no local newspaper demands answers. The Seattle Times, however, filed a public records request to gain access to depositions and other documents from a lawsuit that exposed the reasons why the school district paid $3 million to the family of two girls.
Noisy, vociferous, uninformed parent protests on behalf of a "popular teacher" created timid administrators who wanted to avoid the confrontation, followed by administrators who didn't want to tackle the job, helped to set up a pattern that warned teachers how useless it was to complain. Nevertheless, they did.
At least 15 teachers and staff reported inappropriate behavior to successive school administrators. Teachers knew they were to contact Child Protective Services when they suspected a parent of molesting a child but when a teacher was suspected of the same thing they were supposed to notify an administrator.
Administrators did not document the complaints nor, apparently, investigate the allegations.
Insane school district policies dictated by teacher union contracts serve to protect the teacher at the expense of the student. Under the current teachers' contract, schools must destroy personnel files at the end of each year and start anew. Only records forwarded to the central office remain. Even the "new" training is utterly useless, leaving teachers more puzzled than before.
Shamefully, no administrator will be charged for failing to follow mandatory reporting requirements. Ironically, failing to document teacher complaints helps to insulate an administrator from criminal prosecution.
Meanwhile, Laurence "Shayne" Hill molested these two girls for years.
In the classroom.
He ultimately admitted molesting up to 13 girls — and in 2005 was sentenced to five years to life. Entry for Hill
