Fanon White: Whose Fault Is It?

The BBQ Pit
1

A supervisory school aide has been charged with statutory rape and sodomy of two female students at his school. Just a few years ago, he was fired for having sex 50 times (who was counting) with a female student. This student later recanted, saying she made the whole thing up. He was reinstated and given back pay. He was reinstated because the system failed. He wasn’t given just cause when he was fired and he didn’t get the “hearing” that he was supposed to. In the original debacle, he claims that he spoke to the principal several times about the student harassing him and threatening to ruin him if he didn’t see her. The principal wasn’t interested. It’s unknown whether he was covering up for himself by making false charges in case the student changed her mind about the affair, or if he was actually an innocent victim.

arbitration

This is where the mistake was made. And this,
bastard does it again is what happened as a result.

So, is this the result of the principal for not doing a thorough follow up before canning a pedophile or is this the fault of the board of education for giving this man back his job when they knew that he was in the wrong, but had to fix the mistake already made by the principal?

Not sure if this will get ugly, so I put it in the Pit.

2

I’m confused. The PDF file from arbitration makes it clear that the teacher was found not guilty of the original misconduct. That there was insufficient evidence to even bring charges in criminal court, and not enough evidence to justify his termination.

The evidence was:

  1. Girl claimed they’d had relations.
  2. Girl also recanted.
  3. Girl claimed she thought she was pregnant.
  4. Claim was once incident , not the 50 you state.
  5. The incident was that she went to the teacher’s appartment. INvestigator never apparently questioned the teacher’s roommate, who apparently was there.
  6. Girl substantiated her claim by identifying a poster in teacher’s apartment (he admitted that she’d shown up there once), and that he had 3 tatoos. Teacher had 5 tatoos, 3 of which were visible if he was wearing a short sleeved shirt.

Reasons to believe teacher in this case: 1. Girl recanted. 2. She did not provide locations of tatoos that teacher had that weren’t visible in casual dress (in fact she seemed to be unaware of them). 3. her claim that she was pregnant was made 2 days after the incident.

Reasons to believe the student - 1. Some times in these cases the student can be ambivalent about the relationship, wanting to get him in trouble, not wanting to etc. 2. It’s not impossible. 3. Certainly it was incredibly stupid for him to let her in the apartment, even if there was a witness, especially since he claimed she was stalking him (he also said that she threatened to get him fired - he filed a police report to that effect.

anyhow.
I don’t think we want to get to the place where merely an allegation (that is recanted then made again) is deemed sufficient proof of criminal activity, nor do I think it’s wise to always fire the teacher etc. or not fire.

But the article you linked bothered me more - they made the claim that the newspapers refused to print a story about a child molestation. Wrong. The newspapers correctly refused to print a story about a rumor going around the school, that was found to have little credible evidence.

This happened to a teacher I know recently. His life’s been destroyed because a student made a claim. The evidence in his case was her word, and a letter he’d written in response to one she’d written (pretty much a ‘have a good summer, see ya next year, love ya Mr. so and so’ - they made much of the ‘love ya’)

Her story changed dramatically from the original investigation (when she claimed there were 2 occurances) to the pre lim exam (where she claimed under oath that there were 3 incidents) to the trial (where she added yet another incident). ONe of the incidents she claimed was totally (IMHO) incredible (that during school hours, they’d had sex in his office, which had two large windows running the entire length of the office, one facing the hallway, the other facing his classroom). and, of course, there was substantial evidence that this young lady had made unlikely sexual claims in the past (my son knew her and the year before this, at age 13, she’d claimed twice to have been pregnant and either had abortions or miscarried - no, it’s not impossible, but it also wasn’t all that likely).

anyhow, if he’s guilty of these latest ones, then he should suffer the consequences, but on the evidence you’ve linked, I don’t see that there was a reason to fire him before.

3

Actually, that was kind of my point. If he was guilty of prior incidents, they did a slipshod investigation of them. They waited until years after the time of the incidents before fully looking into them properly and, in my opinion, blew it by not properly letting him defend himself at the time it happened. He wasn’t even aware of why he was fired until, IIRC, 4 years later.

My point is, if he were guilty the first time, they mucked it up by jumping the handle and firing him without covering all their bases. If he isn’t guilty, then unfortunately, that will probably be overlooked.

A few of the sites that I looked at mentioned the number 50, but I haven’t yet been able to find hard info on why/how this number came about. Still looking!

4

I’m still confused. At this point, he’s been charged again, at least according to your second link. However, since they’re the ones that seem to be focused on the ‘gee, these other newspapers failed to report child molestations’ based on them not reporting the prior incident - fer cryin out loud - the prior incident barely was a blip on the radar in a big city - an internal investigation about an employee, and one report to the police (from the teacher) that he was being harrassed. whoa, stop the presses.

So, basically, I’m not seeing that second link to be a credible source of information either, and would rather see details from another source before I’d get into anything else.

“should allegations of abuse be investigated” you bet, thoughoughly.

“once investigated and found unsubstantiated, should the results of the investigation be made public”? That might be an interesting debate, however, for me, I kinda like our system which assumes innocence until the contrary is proven. I believe that if the district had made the info public prior to criminal charges, they’d have opened themselves up for a hefty lawsuit.

I used to run a correction center. Inmates would often threaten to file greivances (and some did file them). These were always investigated, but once the charge is found to be unsubstantiated, why should the employee be penalized in any way for (possibly) having some one lie about them. (yes, I understand that unsubstantiated does not always mean it’s untrue)

5

Won’t someone please think of the children?!

Why is it that in this one type of situation all Constitutional guarantees are considered to be out the window? Insufficient evidence? Fire 'em! Evidence of false complaint? Fire 'em! Rumors of alleged incidents? Fire 'em!

I’m not in favor of going back to the bad old days of never believing children when they claim abuse, but we really need to be careful of going overboard. The old complaint was dismissed completely. The man was found not guilty, not on a technicality, but on the usual things that any defendant is acquitted on: insufficient evidence and an unreliable witness. Innocent until proven guilty. He wasn’t proven guilty.

So why should he have been fired? Because one girl made a complaint that was not substantiated?

The fact that the last event happened doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with whether or not the previous event happened. As far as the school was concerned, the acquittal was sufficient to establish his innocence in the previous case. The most recent allegations have not gone to trial, yet the assumption seems to be that they are true. Why?

jayjay

6

I’m confused about her status. The PDF file states that the student graduated in '97, but also mentions her being late to school – a “new” school – after allegedly visiting White’s apartment. Was she 18 in '98? Even if she wasn’t, how is it the concern of MS 54 what he may or may not have done with the girl, if she was no longer their student? It hasn’t been that long since the “why is it OK to date your students” thread, in which some people, IIRC, claimed it wasn’t wrong to date a former student after they’d graduated.