ALBANY - It was pretty standard fare for high school lovers: Pet names in e-mails and instant messages like “my little princess” and “Housecat,” gifts including a heart shaped pendant, sneaking a sleep over at a girl's house, sex in a car at a mall parking garage.
“I'm always talking about remembering the inner beast, so it makes logical sense that I'd choose not to hide lustful feelings for you,” confided one e-mail. “Can I say it without grabbing you and kissing you?”
“Would you really let me do anything that I wanted to?” prods another.
What was starkly different was the senders were teachers and the recipients students. And the e-mails were part of a rising caseload of sexual and inappropriate relationships between educators and their students, according to hundreds of records obtained under the state Freedom of Information Law.
New York's figures were gathered as part of a seven-month investigation in which Associated Press reporters sought records on teacher discipline in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Across the country, sexual misconduct allegations led states to take action against the licenses of 2,570 educators from 2001 through 2005. That figure includes licenses that were revoked, denied and surrendered.
Young people were victims in at least 69 percent of the cases, and the large majority of those were students.
Nine out of 10 of those abusive educators were male. And at least 446 of the cases the AP found involved educators who had multiple victims.
There are about 3 million public school teachers in the United States.
The cases come from the state's smallest school district, where Long Lake teacher David J. Caron used a school digital camera to take photographs of himself undressed and touching his penis, to the Bronx where DeWitt Clinton High School teacher Michael Johnson was accused of having oral sex with a student, to Niagara Falls where music teacher Philip R. Sims was convicted of sodomy for having sex with a high school student in a three-year relationship.
Teachers are increasingly losing their teaching certificates or having their applications for permanent certification denied over sexual misconduct with students. Statewide, misconduct cases against teachers, coaches, administrators and aides are surfacing at a rate of more than one every two days of school. They include theft, cheating and fraud. But most involve inappropriate relationships, pornography, and - often - sex. Some are characterized by multiple victims, secrecy, and long term emotional damage to children.
The number of moral conduct accusations against teachers, administrators and aides in New York has doubled in five years, according to a state Education Department report. In 2005, 134 cases of “moral misconduct” were reported involving teachers and other school employees and some seeking teaching certificates. That compares to 70 cases in 2001. Almost three in four of the “moral conduct” cases involved sex or an inappropriate relationship, according to the first study of the cases. The study was done three months after 2005 stories by the AP pieced together the extent of the sex cases, few of which ever become public.
In all, 485 misconduct cases were reported over five years, most of them involving sexual misconduct.
By comparison, cases of sexual misconduct reported statewide against Catholic clergy, which caused outrage and calls for action in Albany, totaled 300 over 57 years.
And in schools, it may be far worse than reported.
Hofstra University Professor Charol Shakeshaft said her national survey on teacher-student sex cases shows as many as 9 in 10 cases may go unreported. State officials dispute that hypothesis, but this year are emphasizing schools pursue even anonymous tips.
The AP's first national analysis of teacher sex cases shows Texas and California each proved two to three times as many cases as New York. Florida proved about the same as New York.
To handle the misconduct cases in New York, the state Education Department has six investigators and three attorneys to cover 235,000 certified teachers. An average case costs local taxpayers nearly $129,000 and takes 520 days to complete.
The key to stopping the abuse is listening, said Mary Green, a parent in rural Washington County who took on a fight against a teacher she suspected of having inappropriate relationships.
“If a child says such-and-such a person, teacher, coach or neighbor is `weird,' the parent should not simply dismiss this comment, but have the child explain why the person is weird,” she said. “Often we simply shush them without finding out why the child feels that way. People tend to think it won't happen to them.”
Many of the teachers who lose or surrender their licenses were tenured veterans, especially popular with students and parents and with spotless records.
David C. Pearlman earned his state teacher's certificate in 1972. While an English teacher at the Rye Neck Union Free School District, investigators say he had a sexual relationship with a girl from her sophomore through senior years, ending in 1982. But investigators also claimed that from 1998 to 1999 - as principal at Cooperstown High School - he acted in an unspecified “inappropriate manner” with another girl. He surrendered his certificates in a settlement.
They manipulated boys and girls through attention, seductive instant messages, e-mails, MySpace postings, notes and gifts. Teachers sometimes used alcohol in the abuse. Records showed drinking was involved when Peter S. Martin played strip poker with two 16-year-old girls, fondled them, then photographed them. These educators take advantage of insecurities, sometimes enforced with more domineering, controlling messages. One computer message signed off “Love, Mr. J.” with a smiley face, after remarking about how the girl would look swimming nude.
“Mr. J.” was Richard Jensen. He was 40 years old and married with children when he sent 89 handwritten letters, some 13 to 15 pages, to a junior high school girl in the Islip Union Free School District, records showed. Several electronic messages were sexually explicit and sent as late as 1 a.m. He told her she broke his heart when she backed out of a swimming trip he planned for them to Jones Beach.
“It comes across almost as a kind of mind control,” a state investigator wrote.
“I don't want to hurt you,” wrote another teacher, Edwin H. Elmore of the Plainview-Old Beth Page School District. “So don't force me to do something that will end up making you look bad. When I play hard, I don't lose.”
The girl was in eighth grade.
Elmore has denied what investigators called “inappropriate personal correspondence” to two 8th grade girls, including an invitation to one for a future sexual relationship. His license was revoked.
Other teachers said they were snared in crushes.
Several teachers contacted by the AP declined to comment.
As for the victims, records show they range from 8 years old to - more often - high school age. Most cases involve men having sex with girls and sometimes with boys, but women teachers also were accused of having sex with boys and girls.
Many of the relationships lasted for months or years, sometimes drawing “rumors throughout the school,” but no action until a classmate, parent, teacher or police stepped in.
In October 1997, Sidney High School teacher James Craig told a fellow teacher that he was in love with a 12th grade girl. Craig's colleague didn't report him, but instead advised him to discuss the situation with the principal. Craig didn't. The next spring, he had a second student girlfriend, according to state records. His license was revoked in 2001.
The first action against Timothy A. Humberstone didn't come until four years after state investigators claim he had sex with a 10th grade girl in the 1989-90 school year. A year later, investigators said Humberstone started a second relationship with a girl in 11th grade that turned into a sexual relationship during her senior year. Investigators said she became pregnant with the teacher's child in 12th grade. They eventually married. In 2004, they were divorced and his certificate was revoked.
“There were shameful issues 20 years ago or 15 years ago, people took an attitude of `Don't ask, don't tell”' or `Look away.' I think there's less of that,“ said Bart Zabin, the state's chief investigator.
“That doesn't mean things don't go unspoken - but I think everyone understands not only the issues of liability, but the importance of addressing things that have the appearances of something improper,” he said.
The types of misconduct haven' t changed over the years, said Johanna Duncan-Poitier, the state's senior deputy commissioner of education for pre-K through higher education. What has changed are the tools the abusers use, including e-mails, digital photos and postings on MySpace.com - all of which can be more easily used against them. But it's a small investigative unit and the cases can be difficult, she said.
“We do not have enough to do the aggressive job we want,” Duncan-Poitier said. “We really want to do more for enforcement.”
She said the Education Department is working with the New York State United Teachers union, which represents accused teachers, to add an ethics provision this fall for teachers, similar to one already included for accountants and other professionals.
“I'm think we're on the right track,” said Manny Rivera, Gov. Eliot Spitzer's deputy secretary for education. But he added, “I think there is significantly much more than can be done including more training,” said the former Rochester teacher and administrator. “There are still too many instances of inappropriate behavior.”
In a case in Onondaga County, a teacher was accused of showering 266 e-mails on a student during a sexual relationship from about 2001 to 2003.
The teacher, Joelle Netti-McLaughlin, who was also girls' softball coach at Jordan-Elbridge High School, had a sexual relationship with a high school girl, according to state records. Twenty-eight at the height of the relationship, the teacher used “angry, critical and controlling” e-mails as part of the relationship with the 17-year-old honor student and athlete, the record showed.
“You are my bitch just recognize it and we will be all set,” stated one e-mail from the teacher. It was signed, “Love, Your Master, Joelle.” She closed one with: “With you gone, it will feel like my soul mate is gone. You are really a part of me.”
In another case, a 17-year-old student said Adirondack Central School District teacher Kevin J. Poppleton forced her to have sex with him. She said he told her “that if she told anyone, he would kill her, and, laughing, left to go upstairs to take a shower,” according to her statement. The student testified against him, only to be pushed around by other girls defending the popular instructor.
The girl, once an honor student and athlete, quit school just before graduation.
“She was upset and didn't want this to happen to someone else and it had to stop,” testified the girl's coach, in whom the student eventually confided. “She couldn't believe he did this to her.”
---
On the Net:
New York State School Boards Association: http://www.nyssba.org
New York State Education Department: http://www.nysed.gov
AP-ES-10-18-07 1150EDT
“Would you really let me do anything that I wanted to?” prods another.
What was starkly different was the senders were teachers and the recipients students. And the e-mails were part of a rising caseload of sexual and inappropriate relationships between educators and their students, according to hundreds of records obtained under the state Freedom of Information Law.
New York's figures were gathered as part of a seven-month investigation in which Associated Press reporters sought records on teacher discipline in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Across the country, sexual misconduct allegations led states to take action against the licenses of 2,570 educators from 2001 through 2005. That figure includes licenses that were revoked, denied and surrendered.
Young people were victims in at least 69 percent of the cases, and the large majority of those were students.
Nine out of 10 of those abusive educators were male. And at least 446 of the cases the AP found involved educators who had multiple victims.
There are about 3 million public school teachers in the United States.
The cases come from the state's smallest school district, where Long Lake teacher David J. Caron used a school digital camera to take photographs of himself undressed and touching his penis, to the Bronx where DeWitt Clinton High School teacher Michael Johnson was accused of having oral sex with a student, to Niagara Falls where music teacher Philip R. Sims was convicted of sodomy for having sex with a high school student in a three-year relationship.
Teachers are increasingly losing their teaching certificates or having their applications for permanent certification denied over sexual misconduct with students. Statewide, misconduct cases against teachers, coaches, administrators and aides are surfacing at a rate of more than one every two days of school. They include theft, cheating and fraud. But most involve inappropriate relationships, pornography, and - often - sex. Some are characterized by multiple victims, secrecy, and long term emotional damage to children.
The number of moral conduct accusations against teachers, administrators and aides in New York has doubled in five years, according to a state Education Department report. In 2005, 134 cases of “moral misconduct” were reported involving teachers and other school employees and some seeking teaching certificates. That compares to 70 cases in 2001. Almost three in four of the “moral conduct” cases involved sex or an inappropriate relationship, according to the first study of the cases. The study was done three months after 2005 stories by the AP pieced together the extent of the sex cases, few of which ever become public.
In all, 485 misconduct cases were reported over five years, most of them involving sexual misconduct.
By comparison, cases of sexual misconduct reported statewide against Catholic clergy, which caused outrage and calls for action in Albany, totaled 300 over 57 years.
And in schools, it may be far worse than reported.
Hofstra University Professor Charol Shakeshaft said her national survey on teacher-student sex cases shows as many as 9 in 10 cases may go unreported. State officials dispute that hypothesis, but this year are emphasizing schools pursue even anonymous tips.
The AP's first national analysis of teacher sex cases shows Texas and California each proved two to three times as many cases as New York. Florida proved about the same as New York.
To handle the misconduct cases in New York, the state Education Department has six investigators and three attorneys to cover 235,000 certified teachers. An average case costs local taxpayers nearly $129,000 and takes 520 days to complete.
The key to stopping the abuse is listening, said Mary Green, a parent in rural Washington County who took on a fight against a teacher she suspected of having inappropriate relationships.
“If a child says such-and-such a person, teacher, coach or neighbor is `weird,' the parent should not simply dismiss this comment, but have the child explain why the person is weird,” she said. “Often we simply shush them without finding out why the child feels that way. People tend to think it won't happen to them.”
Many of the teachers who lose or surrender their licenses were tenured veterans, especially popular with students and parents and with spotless records.
David C. Pearlman earned his state teacher's certificate in 1972. While an English teacher at the Rye Neck Union Free School District, investigators say he had a sexual relationship with a girl from her sophomore through senior years, ending in 1982. But investigators also claimed that from 1998 to 1999 - as principal at Cooperstown High School - he acted in an unspecified “inappropriate manner” with another girl. He surrendered his certificates in a settlement.
They manipulated boys and girls through attention, seductive instant messages, e-mails, MySpace postings, notes and gifts. Teachers sometimes used alcohol in the abuse. Records showed drinking was involved when Peter S. Martin played strip poker with two 16-year-old girls, fondled them, then photographed them. These educators take advantage of insecurities, sometimes enforced with more domineering, controlling messages. One computer message signed off “Love, Mr. J.” with a smiley face, after remarking about how the girl would look swimming nude.
“Mr. J.” was Richard Jensen. He was 40 years old and married with children when he sent 89 handwritten letters, some 13 to 15 pages, to a junior high school girl in the Islip Union Free School District, records showed. Several electronic messages were sexually explicit and sent as late as 1 a.m. He told her she broke his heart when she backed out of a swimming trip he planned for them to Jones Beach.
“It comes across almost as a kind of mind control,” a state investigator wrote.
“I don't want to hurt you,” wrote another teacher, Edwin H. Elmore of the Plainview-Old Beth Page School District. “So don't force me to do something that will end up making you look bad. When I play hard, I don't lose.”
The girl was in eighth grade.
Elmore has denied what investigators called “inappropriate personal correspondence” to two 8th grade girls, including an invitation to one for a future sexual relationship. His license was revoked.
Other teachers said they were snared in crushes.
Several teachers contacted by the AP declined to comment.
As for the victims, records show they range from 8 years old to - more often - high school age. Most cases involve men having sex with girls and sometimes with boys, but women teachers also were accused of having sex with boys and girls.
Many of the relationships lasted for months or years, sometimes drawing “rumors throughout the school,” but no action until a classmate, parent, teacher or police stepped in.
In October 1997, Sidney High School teacher James Craig told a fellow teacher that he was in love with a 12th grade girl. Craig's colleague didn't report him, but instead advised him to discuss the situation with the principal. Craig didn't. The next spring, he had a second student girlfriend, according to state records. His license was revoked in 2001.
The first action against Timothy A. Humberstone didn't come until four years after state investigators claim he had sex with a 10th grade girl in the 1989-90 school year. A year later, investigators said Humberstone started a second relationship with a girl in 11th grade that turned into a sexual relationship during her senior year. Investigators said she became pregnant with the teacher's child in 12th grade. They eventually married. In 2004, they were divorced and his certificate was revoked.
“There were shameful issues 20 years ago or 15 years ago, people took an attitude of `Don't ask, don't tell”' or `Look away.' I think there's less of that,“ said Bart Zabin, the state's chief investigator.
“That doesn't mean things don't go unspoken - but I think everyone understands not only the issues of liability, but the importance of addressing things that have the appearances of something improper,” he said.
The types of misconduct haven' t changed over the years, said Johanna Duncan-Poitier, the state's senior deputy commissioner of education for pre-K through higher education. What has changed are the tools the abusers use, including e-mails, digital photos and postings on MySpace.com - all of which can be more easily used against them. But it's a small investigative unit and the cases can be difficult, she said.
“We do not have enough to do the aggressive job we want,” Duncan-Poitier said. “We really want to do more for enforcement.”
She said the Education Department is working with the New York State United Teachers union, which represents accused teachers, to add an ethics provision this fall for teachers, similar to one already included for accountants and other professionals.
“I'm think we're on the right track,” said Manny Rivera, Gov. Eliot Spitzer's deputy secretary for education. But he added, “I think there is significantly much more than can be done including more training,” said the former Rochester teacher and administrator. “There are still too many instances of inappropriate behavior.”
In a case in Onondaga County, a teacher was accused of showering 266 e-mails on a student during a sexual relationship from about 2001 to 2003.
The teacher, Joelle Netti-McLaughlin, who was also girls' softball coach at Jordan-Elbridge High School, had a sexual relationship with a high school girl, according to state records. Twenty-eight at the height of the relationship, the teacher used “angry, critical and controlling” e-mails as part of the relationship with the 17-year-old honor student and athlete, the record showed.
“You are my bitch just recognize it and we will be all set,” stated one e-mail from the teacher. It was signed, “Love, Your Master, Joelle.” She closed one with: “With you gone, it will feel like my soul mate is gone. You are really a part of me.”
In another case, a 17-year-old student said Adirondack Central School District teacher Kevin J. Poppleton forced her to have sex with him. She said he told her “that if she told anyone, he would kill her, and, laughing, left to go upstairs to take a shower,” according to her statement. The student testified against him, only to be pushed around by other girls defending the popular instructor.
The girl, once an honor student and athlete, quit school just before graduation.
“She was upset and didn't want this to happen to someone else and it had to stop,” testified the girl's coach, in whom the student eventually confided. “She couldn't believe he did this to her.”
---
On the Net:
New York State School Boards Association: http://www.nyssba.org
New York State Education Department: http://www.nysed.gov
AP-ES-10-18-07 1150EDT
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