July 28, 2022 • 12 mins
While researching the series, the Betrayal team learned about the prevalence of Educator Sexual Misconduct. Dr. Charol Shakeshaft, an expert and researcher, explains why problems persist and what schools can do about it.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal Bonus Episode two,
Educator sexual Misconduct. We've addressed betrayal in various ways during
the series, and we've heard from many of you that
personally identified with Rachel, the victim that Spencer Heron was
(00:46):
convicted of sexually assaulting at Kel High School. During our production,
we've learned more about how pervasive educator sexual misconduct is.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Sexual misconduct is a range of verbal, visual, and natory
and physical behaviors that are sexualized. Interactions with students in schools,
anything from language to students that is sexualized, asking them
what they like to do for sex, what kind of
(01:16):
sex do they like, to things that are visual, for instance,
masturbating in front of students, never touching them, but masturbating
in front of them, or disrobing in front of them,
or sending them pictures of penises or breasts or vaginas,
and then physical assault issues like forced sex, or in
terms of miners, it may not be for sex. They're miners.
(01:40):
They may be confused. They're often told the person loves
them and cares for them, and they're going to get
married and things are going to be okay.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
That's doctor Cheryl Shakeshaft. She's a professor of educational leadership
at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of a congressionally
mandated report an educators have misconduct. She's been studying school
employees sexual misconduct for more than twenty five years. Our
team reached out to her to learn more about the problem.
(02:10):
Doctor Sheakeschaff believes schools have not done nearly enough to
prevent educator sexual misconduct and that the onus is often
on the children to report. We have received so many
emails with similar stories to Rachel's, we thought it was
important to raise awareness to help students, parents and schools
be aware to avoid predators like Spencer.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
We have expected the children to be the people who
police the school and prevent things from happening, so we
give them training about good touch, bad touch. Nothing wrong
with that. They should know those things absolutely, but adults
also need to know exactly what they should do when
they see things, when things are going on, when their
(02:53):
bystanders and stuff happens in front of them. They need
training to be able to understand what that means, you know,
not just say, oh, he's just a friendly teacher. He
hugs all the kids, or she just really likes her students,
and yes, she goes out of her way for them.
You know, they need to understand what the boundaries are,
(03:14):
that nobody gets to cross those boundaries, and that if
you see boundary crossing, you report it. And then the
people who gets reported to need to understand that if
there's a report, you need to actually do something. You
need to in most cases call the police and have
an investigation.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
And sometimes even well meaning teachers don't understand the dynamics
of teachers who engage in sexual misconduct. We heard from
a teacher who joined the staff at Kel High School
after Spencer Hearn was arrested, and one of his comments
really stood out.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
He wrote, many.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Teachers at Kel would tell me it didn't really believe
the charges, or that every story has two sides, and
it really made me feel uncomfortable because of deplorable charges.
I found it odd that so many employees were complacent
are passive about the story.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
In schools, they often allowed teachers to break rules, taking
students in their cars, being alone with students behind closed
and locked doors in their rooms. Teachers see things of
their colleagues and they don't respond. I asked teachers did
you see anything, and they say, yes, I did. It
was you know, really irregular and not allowed behavior. And
(04:30):
then I say to the teacher, will did you report it?
And the teacher will say, well no, And then I
ask why and the teacher says, well, you know, if
I was wrong, I might get a colleague in trouble
and I didn't want to do that, and it's kind
of awkward, you know, we're friendly, and I just it
just I just didn't report. I've never heard a teacher
say yes, I reported, and I reported because even if
(04:54):
I'm wrong, I wanted to make sure that if something
was happening, somebody was looking into us. So the issue
is that in schools we don't do anything, and by
not doing anything, by not using prevention methods, we enable
those people who either intend to abuse or come around
(05:15):
to abusing, because they start crossing boundary after boundary after boundary,
and pretty soon there they are. We enable them. It's
like having roads with no stop signs.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Perhaps teachers don't know what they should say.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
We need to practice the language of reporting, just get
people familiar with it. Instead of saying I don't think
this is really real. I mean I'm probably making something
out of nothing. I mean, it's just well, you know,
I really hate to bring this up, saying Harold has
his classroom across the hall from me, and I see
him there regularly alone with individual students. It concerns me.
(05:53):
Or I saw Janine having dinner with one of her
students and they were sitting really close together. I'm concerned.
We need to teach people to just give information and
then it's somebody to take the next step and investigate.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
We asked doctor Shee Schaft, how can we change that
thinking and culture in schools.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Every school should have training, training about patterns and what
happens and what you're supposed to do as an adult.
Every school should have a set of behaviors so that
people understand what's acceptable and what's not acceptable between adults
and students. Many kids just think that it's okay. They say,
if this weren't okay, somebody would have stopped it. Everybody
(06:36):
sees how he acts or how she acts, so kids
don't really understand, and they think of it as dating.
They don't understand the issues. So the kids see it,
kids talk about it, they see it. They know stuff's
going on, but they don't report it because they don't
code it as something that is supposed to be reported
because no one's ever taught them.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Doctor Shakeshaft explains that there is training for sexual harassment,
but schools could do more.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
When you ask most schools if they have training, they say, yes,
we have training. And then when you ask to see
the training, what you see is either training about sexual
harassment peer to peers, so the adults get training about
not harassing one of their colleagues, kids get training about
not harassing one of their peers, but neither get training
about the adult sexually harassing the student. Or they get
(07:36):
trained on mandated reporting. But mandated reporting training is about
reporting things that happen outside the school, not inside the school.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
What else could schools do.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
We need people who walk through the cafeteria at lunchtime
and look at what adults and students are doing. People
who when they walk down the halls are looking at
adult and student interaction. When they go by a classroom door,
looking in and seeing what's going on when it's before
school and after school and the classroom's empty, checking the classroom,
seeing what's happened. We need people who are on the
(08:10):
move and looking for the right things. It isn't that
people don't walk down the halls, but they aren't looking
at adult as student interactions. They're looking for some student
who's misbehavior. They're not looking for these things. So we
need supervisory behavior. When you hear a rumor, even if
it's abstract, we need people who will investigate.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
And on the occasions someone does report it, the investigation
often doesn't go far enough.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
They tend to call the teacher in and say are
you having sex with Anne Marie? And the teacher says no,
and the person says, okay, thank you, I didn't think so.
And then the teacher steps out and texts Anne Marie
and says, erase everything off your phone, and if you
get called in, tell them nothing's going on, and that's
the end of it. They don't follow up in super vision.
(09:00):
They don't follow up and try to see what's happening.
They don't do an investigation, they don't ask the friends,
they don't do anything.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
One of our listeners shared a story that still upsets
her years later.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
She tried to do the right thing.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
She wrote, I was a sophomore in high school and
one of my teachers used to hit on me and
tell me very inappropriate things, for instance, how he would
rather have me beside him in his bed instead of
his wife. Nothing physical ever happened. It was all verbal
and the mental toll it had on me. It was
so much more than my teenage mind could take. He
(09:37):
would follow me in the hallways. I couldn't take it
anymore and broke down in tears to my mother and
told her everything. We went to the school and told
the principal everything. He seemed skeptical. I was brought in
the next day for questioning. Needless to say, nothing.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Happened and he was slapped with a week off.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
When he came back, it was worse because now he
demanded to know why are I said anything?
Speaker 3 (10:02):
So what should happen?
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Call the police and have an investigation. That's what you
need to do.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
And what else does doctor sheikschaff feel is non negotiable.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
No sharing phone numbers, no sharing social media, no having
friends on Facebook, no TikTok, no Instagram, no nothing. School
districts are supposed to have email that are monitored. They
can have texting systems that are monitored, so that you're
using the monitored texting systems for the school. There are
(10:36):
lots of ways to do electronic communication with students when
you need to, that are monitored by schools and are
therefore safe. Now that doesn't mean somebody might not also
use their telephone, but we should at least start with
the rule that no, you can't use your personal telephone number.
You can't use your personal telephone number for texting, or
(10:58):
your personal email or your personal social media. School districts
have Facebook social media pages, they have other things where
if you want to make an announcement to your students,
you want to do whatever, you can do it there.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
And we can't just say this one time at the
beginning of the school year.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
It needs to be messaged over and over again.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
It is a simple rule and it should be followed,
and it should be followed with big signs up all
over the place and little pop ups that come up
and other things to remind people. Don't give out your
telephone number to an adult in the school, don't give
out your telephone number to a student in school. Don't text.
We need to change the patterns.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Doctor Shakeschaff understands how much we put on our teachers.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I was a teacher and I thought This job's the
hardest job I've ever had. It was wonderful, but it's
hard work. And so I don't want to slam the
teachers for that. Yeah, they're busy, but it is a
school culture problem. If you have a school culture that's
the culture of students safe use first, and these are
the things we do, and we talk about it, and
(12:03):
we share our strategies and we bring it up and
we don't bury it, and we don't just say, hey,
we've got a handbook and policies, read them and then
tell people that's training, which it's not. You know, we
can change a culture where we say we don't cross
kids boundaries. That's behavior that's not acceptable. Here.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
The Betrayal Team thanks doctor Shakeshaft for insight into educator
sexual misconduct. There are new developments in Jennifer's story and
we'll share them with you in an additional bonus episode
soon
I'm Andrea Gunning and this is Betrayal Bonus Episode two,
Educator sexual Misconduct. We've addressed betrayal in various ways during
the series, and we've heard from many of you that
personally identified with Rachel, the victim that Spencer Heron was
(00:46):
convicted of sexually assaulting at Kel High School. During our production,
we've learned more about how pervasive educator sexual misconduct is.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Sexual misconduct is a range of verbal, visual, and natory
and physical behaviors that are sexualized. Interactions with students in schools,
anything from language to students that is sexualized, asking them
what they like to do for sex, what kind of
(01:16):
sex do they like, to things that are visual, for instance,
masturbating in front of students, never touching them, but masturbating
in front of them, or disrobing in front of them,
or sending them pictures of penises or breasts or vaginas,
and then physical assault issues like forced sex, or in
terms of miners, it may not be for sex. They're miners.
(01:40):
They may be confused. They're often told the person loves
them and cares for them, and they're going to get
married and things are going to be okay.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
That's doctor Cheryl Shakeshaft. She's a professor of educational leadership
at Virginia Commonwealth University and the author of a congressionally
mandated report an educators have misconduct. She's been studying school
employees sexual misconduct for more than twenty five years. Our
team reached out to her to learn more about the problem.
(02:10):
Doctor Sheakeschaff believes schools have not done nearly enough to
prevent educator sexual misconduct and that the onus is often
on the children to report. We have received so many
emails with similar stories to Rachel's, we thought it was
important to raise awareness to help students, parents and schools
be aware to avoid predators like Spencer.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
We have expected the children to be the people who
police the school and prevent things from happening, so we
give them training about good touch, bad touch. Nothing wrong
with that. They should know those things absolutely, but adults
also need to know exactly what they should do when
they see things, when things are going on, when their
(02:53):
bystanders and stuff happens in front of them. They need
training to be able to understand what that means, you know,
not just say, oh, he's just a friendly teacher. He
hugs all the kids, or she just really likes her students,
and yes, she goes out of her way for them.
You know, they need to understand what the boundaries are,
(03:14):
that nobody gets to cross those boundaries, and that if
you see boundary crossing, you report it. And then the
people who gets reported to need to understand that if
there's a report, you need to actually do something. You
need to in most cases call the police and have
an investigation.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
And sometimes even well meaning teachers don't understand the dynamics
of teachers who engage in sexual misconduct. We heard from
a teacher who joined the staff at Kel High School
after Spencer Hearn was arrested, and one of his comments
really stood out.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
He wrote, many.
Speaker 1 (03:50):
Teachers at Kel would tell me it didn't really believe
the charges, or that every story has two sides, and
it really made me feel uncomfortable because of deplorable charges.
I found it odd that so many employees were complacent
are passive about the story.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
In schools, they often allowed teachers to break rules, taking
students in their cars, being alone with students behind closed
and locked doors in their rooms. Teachers see things of
their colleagues and they don't respond. I asked teachers did
you see anything, and they say, yes, I did. It
was you know, really irregular and not allowed behavior. And
(04:30):
then I say to the teacher, will did you report it?
And the teacher will say, well no, And then I
ask why and the teacher says, well, you know, if
I was wrong, I might get a colleague in trouble
and I didn't want to do that, and it's kind
of awkward, you know, we're friendly, and I just it
just I just didn't report. I've never heard a teacher
say yes, I reported, and I reported because even if
(04:54):
I'm wrong, I wanted to make sure that if something
was happening, somebody was looking into us. So the issue
is that in schools we don't do anything, and by
not doing anything, by not using prevention methods, we enable
those people who either intend to abuse or come around
(05:15):
to abusing, because they start crossing boundary after boundary after boundary,
and pretty soon there they are. We enable them. It's
like having roads with no stop signs.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Perhaps teachers don't know what they should say.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
We need to practice the language of reporting, just get
people familiar with it. Instead of saying I don't think
this is really real. I mean I'm probably making something
out of nothing. I mean, it's just well, you know,
I really hate to bring this up, saying Harold has
his classroom across the hall from me, and I see
him there regularly alone with individual students. It concerns me.
(05:53):
Or I saw Janine having dinner with one of her
students and they were sitting really close together. I'm concerned.
We need to teach people to just give information and
then it's somebody to take the next step and investigate.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
We asked doctor Shee Schaft, how can we change that
thinking and culture in schools.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Every school should have training, training about patterns and what
happens and what you're supposed to do as an adult.
Every school should have a set of behaviors so that
people understand what's acceptable and what's not acceptable between adults
and students. Many kids just think that it's okay. They say,
if this weren't okay, somebody would have stopped it. Everybody
(06:36):
sees how he acts or how she acts, so kids
don't really understand, and they think of it as dating.
They don't understand the issues. So the kids see it,
kids talk about it, they see it. They know stuff's
going on, but they don't report it because they don't
code it as something that is supposed to be reported
because no one's ever taught them.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Doctor Shakeshaft explains that there is training for sexual harassment,
but schools could do more.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
When you ask most schools if they have training, they say, yes,
we have training. And then when you ask to see
the training, what you see is either training about sexual
harassment peer to peers, so the adults get training about
not harassing one of their colleagues, kids get training about
not harassing one of their peers, but neither get training
about the adult sexually harassing the student. Or they get
(07:36):
trained on mandated reporting. But mandated reporting training is about
reporting things that happen outside the school, not inside the school.
Speaker 3 (07:45):
What else could schools do.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
We need people who walk through the cafeteria at lunchtime
and look at what adults and students are doing. People
who when they walk down the halls are looking at
adult and student interaction. When they go by a classroom door,
looking in and seeing what's going on when it's before
school and after school and the classroom's empty, checking the classroom,
seeing what's happened. We need people who are on the
(08:10):
move and looking for the right things. It isn't that
people don't walk down the halls, but they aren't looking
at adult as student interactions. They're looking for some student
who's misbehavior. They're not looking for these things. So we
need supervisory behavior. When you hear a rumor, even if
it's abstract, we need people who will investigate.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
And on the occasions someone does report it, the investigation
often doesn't go far enough.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
They tend to call the teacher in and say are
you having sex with Anne Marie? And the teacher says no,
and the person says, okay, thank you, I didn't think so.
And then the teacher steps out and texts Anne Marie
and says, erase everything off your phone, and if you
get called in, tell them nothing's going on, and that's
the end of it. They don't follow up in super vision.
(09:00):
They don't follow up and try to see what's happening.
They don't do an investigation, they don't ask the friends,
they don't do anything.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
One of our listeners shared a story that still upsets
her years later.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
She tried to do the right thing.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
She wrote, I was a sophomore in high school and
one of my teachers used to hit on me and
tell me very inappropriate things, for instance, how he would
rather have me beside him in his bed instead of
his wife. Nothing physical ever happened. It was all verbal
and the mental toll it had on me. It was
so much more than my teenage mind could take. He
(09:37):
would follow me in the hallways. I couldn't take it
anymore and broke down in tears to my mother and
told her everything. We went to the school and told
the principal everything. He seemed skeptical. I was brought in
the next day for questioning. Needless to say, nothing.
Speaker 3 (09:53):
Happened and he was slapped with a week off.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
When he came back, it was worse because now he
demanded to know why are I said anything?
Speaker 3 (10:02):
So what should happen?
Speaker 2 (10:05):
Call the police and have an investigation. That's what you
need to do.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
And what else does doctor sheikschaff feel is non negotiable.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
No sharing phone numbers, no sharing social media, no having
friends on Facebook, no TikTok, no Instagram, no nothing. School
districts are supposed to have email that are monitored. They
can have texting systems that are monitored, so that you're
using the monitored texting systems for the school. There are
(10:36):
lots of ways to do electronic communication with students when
you need to, that are monitored by schools and are
therefore safe. Now that doesn't mean somebody might not also
use their telephone, but we should at least start with
the rule that no, you can't use your personal telephone number.
You can't use your personal telephone number for texting, or
(10:58):
your personal email or your personal social media. School districts
have Facebook social media pages, they have other things where
if you want to make an announcement to your students,
you want to do whatever, you can do it there.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
And we can't just say this one time at the
beginning of the school year.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
It needs to be messaged over and over again.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
It is a simple rule and it should be followed,
and it should be followed with big signs up all
over the place and little pop ups that come up
and other things to remind people. Don't give out your
telephone number to an adult in the school, don't give
out your telephone number to a student in school. Don't text.
We need to change the patterns.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
Doctor Shakeschaff understands how much we put on our teachers.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
I was a teacher and I thought This job's the
hardest job I've ever had. It was wonderful, but it's
hard work. And so I don't want to slam the
teachers for that. Yeah, they're busy, but it is a
school culture problem. If you have a school culture that's
the culture of students safe use first, and these are
the things we do, and we talk about it, and
(12:03):
we share our strategies and we bring it up and
we don't bury it, and we don't just say, hey,
we've got a handbook and policies, read them and then
tell people that's training, which it's not. You know, we
can change a culture where we say we don't cross
kids boundaries. That's behavior that's not acceptable. Here.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
The Betrayal Team thanks doctor Shakeshaft for insight into educator
sexual misconduct. There are new developments in Jennifer's story and
we'll share them with you in an additional bonus episode
soon
Host
Andrea Gunning
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