By MARTHA IRVINE and ROBERT TANNER, AP National Writers
3 minutes ago



The young teacher hung his head, avoiding eye contact. Yes, he had touched a fifth-grader's breast during recess. "I guess it was just lust of the flesh," he told his boss.

That got Gary C. Lindsey fired from his first teaching job in Oelwein, Iowa. But it didn't end his career. He taught for decades in Illinois and Iowa, fending off at least a half-dozen more abuse accusations.

When he finally surrendered his teaching license in 2004 — 40 years after that first little girl came forward — it wasn't a principal or a state agency that ended his career. It was one persistent victim and her parents.

Lindsey's case is just a small example of a widespread problem in American schools: sexual misconduct by the very teachers who are supposed to be nurturing the nation's children.

Students in America's schools are groped. They're raped. They're pursued, seduced and think they're in love.

An Associated Press investigation found more than 2,500 cases over five years in which educators were punished for actions from bizarre to sadistic.

There are 3 million public school teachers nationwide, most devoted to their work. Yet the number of abusive educators — nearly three for every school day — speaks to a much larger problem in a system that is stacked against victims.

Most of the abuse never gets reported. Those cases reported often end with no action. Cases investigated sometimes can't be proven, and many abusers have several victims.

And no one — not the schools, not the courts, not the state or federal governments — has found a surefire way to keep molesting teachers out of classrooms.

Those are the findings of an AP investigation in which reporters sought disciplinary records in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The result is an unprecedented national look at the scope of sex offenses by educators — the very definition of breach of trust.

The seven-month investigation found 2,570 educators whose teaching credentials were revoked, denied, surrendered or sanctioned from 2001 through 2005 following allegations of sexual misconduct.

Young people were the victims in at least 1,801 of the cases, and more than 80 percent of those were students. At least half the educators who were punished by their states also were convicted of crimes related to their misconduct.

The findings draw obvious comparisons to sex abuse scandals in other institutions, among them the Roman Catholic Church. A review by America's Catholic bishops found that about 4,400 of 110,000 priests were accused of molesting minors from 1950 through 2002.

Clergy abuse is part of the national consciousness after a string of highly publicized cases. But until now, there's been little sense of the extent of educator abuse.

Beyond the horror of individual crimes, the larger shame is that the institutions that govern education have only sporadically addressed a problem that's been apparent for years.

"From my own experience — this could get me in trouble — I think every single school district in the nation has at least one perpetrator. At least one," says Mary Jo McGrath, a California lawyer who has spent 30 years investigating abuse and misconduct in schools. "It doesn't matter if it's urban or rural or suburban."

One report mandated by Congress estimated that as many as 4.5 million students, out of roughly 50 million in American schools, are subject to sexual misconduct by an employee of a school sometime between kindergarten and 12th grade. That figure includes verbal harassment that's sexual in nature.

Jennah Bramow, one of Lindsey's accusers in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, wonders why there isn't more outrage.

"You're supposed to be able to send your kids to school knowing that they're going to be safe," says Bramow, now 20. While other victims accepted settlement deals and signed confidentiality agreements, she sued her city's schools for failing to protect her and others from Lindsey — and won. Only then was Lindsey's teaching license finally revoked.

As an 8-year-old elementary-school student, Bramow told how Lindsey forced her hand on what she called his "pee-pee."

"How did you know it was his pee-pee?" an interviewer at St. Luke's Child Protection Center in Cedar Rapids asked Jennah in a videotape, taken in 1995.

"'Cause I felt something?" said Jennah, then a fidgety girl with long, dark hair.

"How did it feel?" the investigator asked.

"Bumpy," Jennah replied. She drew a picture that showed how Lindsey made her touch him on the zipper area of his pants.

Lindsey, now 68, refused multiple requests for an interview. "It never occurs to you people that some people don't want their past opened back up," he said when an AP reporter approached him at his home outside Cedar Rapids and asked questions.

That past, according to evidence presented in the Bramow's civil case, included accusations from students and parents along with reprimands from principals that were filed away, explained away and ultimately ignored until 1995, when accusations from Bramow and two other girls forced his early retirement. Even then, he kept his teaching license until the Bramows took the case public and filed a complaint with the state.

Like Lindsey, the perpetrators that the AP found are everyday educators — teachers, school psychologists, principals and superintendents among them. They're often popular and recognized for excellence and, in nearly nine out of 10 cases, they're male. While some abused students in school, others were cited for sexual misconduct after hours that didn't necessarily involve a kid from their classes, such as viewing or distributing child pornography.

They include:

• Joseph E. Hayes, a former principal in East St. Louis, Ill. DNA evidence in a civil case determined that he impregnated a 14-year-old student. Never charged criminally, his license was suspended in 2003. He has ignored an order to surrender it permanently.

• Donald M. Landrum, a high school teacher in Polk County, N.C. His bosses warned him not to meet with female students behind closed doors. They put a glass window in his office door, but Landrum papered over it. Police later found pornography and condoms in his office and alleged that he was about to have sex with a female student. His license was revoked in 2005.

• Rebecca A. Boicelli, a former teacher in Redwood City, Calif. She conceived a child with a 16-year-old former student then went on maternity leave in 2004 while police investigated. She was hired to teach in a nearby school district; board members said police hadn't told them about the investigation.

The overwhelming majority of cases the AP examined involved teachers in public schools. Private school teachers rarely turn up because many are not required to have a teaching license and, even when they have one, disciplinary actions are typically handled within the school.

Two of the nation's major teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, each denounced sex abuse while emphasizing that educators' rights also must be taken into account.

"Students must be protected from sexual predators and abuse, and teachers must be protected from false accusations," said NEA President Reg Weaver, who refused to be interviewed and instead released a two-paragraph statement.

Kathy Buzad of the AFT said that "if there's one incident of sexual misconduct between a teacher and a student that's one too many."

The United States has grown more sympathetic to victims of sex abuse over recent decades, particularly when it comes to young people. Laws that protect children from abusers bear the names of young victims. Police have made pursuing Internet predators a priority. People convicted of abuse typically face tough sentences and registry as sex offenders.

Even so, sexually abusive teachers continue to take advantage, and there are several reasons why.

For one, many Americans deny the problem, and even treat the abuse with misplaced fascination. Popular media reports trumpet relationships between attractive female teachers and male students.

"It's dealt with in a salacious manner with late-night comedians saying 'What 14-year-old boy wouldn't want to have sex with his teacher?' It trivializes the whole issue," says Robert Shoop, a professor of educational administration at Kansas State University who has written a book aimed at helping school districts identify and deal with sexual misconduct.

"In other cases, it's reported as if this is some deviant who crawled into the school district — 'and now that they're gone, everything's OK.' But it's much more prevalent than people would think."

The AP investigation found efforts to stop individual offenders but, overall, a deeply entrenched resistance toward recognizing and fighting abuse. It starts in school hallways, where fellow teachers look away or feel powerless to help. School administrators make behind-the-scenes deals to avoid lawsuits and other trouble. And in state capitals and Congress, lawmakers shy from tough state punishments or any cohesive national policy for fear of disparaging a vital profession.

That only enables rogue teachers, and puts kids who aren't likely to be believed in a tough spot.

In case after case the AP examined, accusations of inappropriate behavior were dismissed. One girl in Mansfield, Ohio, complained about a sexual assault by teacher Donald Coots and got expelled. It was only when a second girl, years later, brought a similar complaint against the same teacher that he was punished.

And that second girl also was ostracized by the school community and ultimately left town.

Unless there's a videotape of a teacher involved with a child, everyone wants to believe the authority figure, says Wayne Promisel, a retired Virginia detective who has investigated many sex abuse cases.

He and others who track the problem reiterated one point repeatedly during the AP investigation: Very few abusers get caught.

They point to several academic studies estimating that only about one in 10 victimized children report sexual abuse of any kind to someone who can do something about it.

Teachers, administrators and even parents frequently don't, or won't, recognize the signs that a crime is taking place.

"They can't see what's in front of their face. Not unlike a kid in an alcoholic family, who'll say 'My family is great,'" says McGrath, the California lawyer and investigator who now trains entire school systems how to recognize what she calls the unmistakable "red flags" of misconduct.

In Hamburg, Pa., in 2002, those "red flags" should have been clear. A student skipped classes every day to spend time with one teacher. He gave her gifts and rides in his car. She sat on his lap. The bond ran so deep that the student got chastised repeatedly — even suspended once for being late and absent so often. But there were no questions for the teacher.

Heather Kline was 12, a girl with a broad smile and blond hair pulled back tight. Teacher Troy Mansfield had cultivated her since she was in his third-grade class.

"Kids, like, idolized me because they thought I was, like, cool because he paid more attention to me," says Kline, now 18, sitting at her mother's kitchen table, sorting through a file of old poems and cards from Mansfield. "I was just like really comfortable. I could tell him anything."

He never pushed her, just raised the stakes, bit by bit — a comment about how good she looked, a gift, a hug.

She was sure she was in love.

By winter of seventh grade, he was sneaking her off in his car for an hour of sex, dropping in on her weekly baby-sitting duties, e-mailing about what clothes she should wear, about his sexual fantasies, about marriage and children.

Mansfield finally got caught by the girl's mother, and his own words convicted him. At his criminal trial in 2004, Heather read his e-mails and instant messages aloud, from declarations of true love to explicit references to past sex. He's serving up to 31 years in state prison.

The growing use of e-mails and text messages is leaving a trail that investigators and prosecutors can use to prove an intimate relationship when other evidence is hard to find.

Even then, many in the community find it difficult to accept that a predator is in their midst. When these cases break, defendants often portray the students as seducers or false accusers. However, every investigator questioned said that is largely a misconception.

"I've been involved in several hundred investigations," says Martin Bates, an assistant superintendent in a Salt Lake City school district. "I think I've seen that just a couple of times ... where a teacher is being pursued by a student."

Too often, problem teachers are allowed to leave quietly. That can mean future abuse for another student and another school district.

"They might deal with it internally, suspending the person or having the person move on. So their license is never investigated," says Charol Shakeshaft, a leading expert in teacher sex abuse who heads the educational leadership department at Virginia Commonwealth University.

It's a dynamic so common it has its own nicknames — "passing the trash" or the "mobile molester."

Laws in several states require that even an allegation of sexual misconduct be reported to the state departments that oversee teacher licenses. But there's no consistent enforcement, so such laws are easy to ignore.

School officials fear public embarrassment as much as the perpetrators do, Shakeshaft says. They want to avoid the fallout from going up against a popular teacher. They also don't want to get sued by teachers or victims, and they don't want to face a challenge from a strong union.

In the Iowa case, Lindsey agreed to leave without fighting when his bosses kept the reason for his departure confidential. The decades' worth of allegations against him would have stayed secret, if not for Bramow.

Across the country, such deals and lack of information-sharing allow abusive teachers to jump state lines, even when one school does put a stop to the abuse.

While some schools and states have been aggressive about investigating problem teachers and publicizing it when they're found, others were hesitant to share details of cases with the AP — Alabama and Mississippi among the more resistant. Maine, the only state that gave the AP no disciplinary information, has a law that keeps offending teachers' cases secret.

Meanwhile, the reasons given for punishing hundreds of educators, including many in California, were so vague there was no way to tell why they'd been punished, until further investigation by AP reporters revealed it was sexual misconduct.

And in Hawaii, no educators were disciplined by the state in the five years the AP examined, even though some teachers there were serving sentences for various sex crimes during that time. They technically remained teachers, even behind bars.

Elsewhere, there have been fitful steps toward catching errant teachers that may be having some effect. The AP found the number of state actions against sexually abusive teachers rose steadily, to a high of 649 in 2005.

More states now require background checks on teachers, fingerprinting and mandatory reporting of abuse, though there are still loopholes and a lack of coordination among districts and states.

U.S. Supreme Court rulings in the last 20 years on civil rights and sex discrimination have opened schools up to potentially huge financial punishments for abuses, which has driven some schools to act.

And the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification keeps a list of educators who've been punished for any reason, but only shares the names among state agencies.

The uncoordinated system that's developed means some teachers still fall through the cracks. Aaron M. Brevik is a case in point.

Brevik was a teacher at an elementary school in Warren, Mich., until he was accused of using a camera hidden in a gym bag to secretly film boys in locker rooms and showers. He also faced charges that he recorded himself molesting a boy while the child slept.

Found guilty of criminal sexual conduct, Brevik is now serving a five- to 20-year prison sentence and lost his Michigan license in 2005.

What Michigan officials apparently didn't know when they hired him was that Brevik's teaching license in Minnesota had been permanently suspended in 2001 after he allegedly invited two male minors to stay with him in a hotel room. He was principal of an elementary school in southeastern Minnesota at the time.

"I tell you what, they never go away. They just blend a little better," says Steve Janosko, a prosecutor in Ocean County, N.J., who handled the case of a former high school teacher and football coach, Nicholas J. Arminio.

Arminio surrendered his New Jersey teaching license in 1994 after two female students separately accused him of inappropriate touching. The state of Maryland didn't know that when he applied for teaching credentials and took a job at a high school in Baltimore County. He eventually resigned and lost that license, too.

Even so, until this month, he was coaching football at another Baltimore County high school in a job that does not require a teaching license. After the AP started asking questions, he was fired.

Victims also face consequences when teachers are punished.

In Pennsylvania, after news of teacher Troy Mansfield's arrest hit, girls called Kline, his 12-year-old victim, a "slut" to her face. A teacher called her a "vixen." Friends stopped talking to her. Kids no longer sat with her at lunch.

Her abuser, meanwhile, had been a popular teacher and football coach.

So, between rumors that she was pregnant or doing drugs and her own panic attacks and depression, Kline bounced between schools. At 16, she ran away to Nashville.

"I didn't have my childhood," says Kline, who's back home now, working at a grocery cash register and hoping to get her GED so she can go to nursing school. "He had me so matured at so young.

"I remember going from little baby dolls to just being an adult."

The courts dealt her a final insult. A federal judge dismissed her civil suit against the school, saying administrators had no obligation to protect her from a predatory teacher since officials were unaware of the abuse, despite what the court called widespread "unsubstantiated rumors" in the school. The family is appealing.

In Iowa, the state Supreme Court made the opposite ruling in the Bramow case, deciding she and her parents could sue the Cedar Rapids schools for failing to stop Lindsey.

Bramow, now a young mother who waits tables for a living, won a $20,000 judgment. But Lindsey was never criminally charged due to what the former county prosecutor deemed insufficient evidence.

Arthur Sensor, the former superintendent in Oelwein, Iowa, who vividly recalls pressuring Lindsey to quit on Feb. 18, 1964, regrets that he didn't do more to stop him back then.

Now, he says, he'd call the police.

"He promised me he wouldn't do it again — that he had learned. And he was a young man, a beginning teacher, had a young wife, a young child," Sensor, now 86 years old, said during testimony at the Bramows' civil trial.

"I wanted to believe him, and I did."

Great post OP, it just makes parents more aware that their young ones need to watched closely. If your young one's habits change for any reason investigate! Boy or girl!

It's a shame, that we cannot let our children go any where now a days without our constantly watching out for them. Between the drugs and sex, a kid's chances are poor. More likely than not, they'll be a victim. Being a parent in today's world is not a joke at all! I feel for the children whose parents just leave them for the world to ruin. Even the best parent will make mistakes, but know this in the end you will have to deal with it.

it seems that our children aren't safe anywhere
if they aren't safe in school, then what is a parent to do?

If you are asking, my advice is to let teachers and students alike, know you are apt to show up at anytime randomly. Be available for your child, able to share everything they want to share with you. Be open minded, not a push over though. If you do this in their younger years, they'll more likely, share with you in the later years. I a mom of two women, 32yoa and 30yoa, I know what I am speaking of.

well.... HOMESCHOOL. Take resposibility for your childern instead of letting big brother screw them up, then blame you when thier out of control.
theres also another side to this mess... Kids who, after being disiplined at home, go to school and tell someone they were molested. Been through that one myself so i know it does happen. I would never date a woman with kids in the public fool system for just that reason.

yes homeschooling is becoming more and more popular

the school systems no longer care about the children, just how much money they get each year for the child

parents taking control over their childrens education does work
well it does for me at this time

Homeschool??? Yes that is an option but the fact is that our children should be able to go to public school and still be safe.....do you blame the government or school system for a pedophile touching your kids??? No, you blame the pedophile!!!

I know there are some types of school checks on these types of people but sometimes they slip through the cracks

Home Schooling IS NOT AN OPTION for the majority. It's narrow minded to even consider that it could be.

There are millions of single parent homes, and millions more in which both parent, earning minimum wage MUST work, and millions more in which the parent or parents, simply are not capable of following a home curriculum.

Government says school is mandatory, so they provide the schools, we must be able to utilize them. If those who 'choose'to pay taxes for schools while they pull their kids out of them, have so much time to give, perhaps they should consider giving that time to making the system work!

I am just going to make a statement for the record here. I have to say I find it offensive that you people will sit in here and ***** about the public school system! I am from a family of teachers. My mom, my sister, 2 cousins, and they are the most underpayed and under appreciated professionals at least in our state. They are in it for the kids! They love their jobs....and it is a constant struggle just to get the funding to bye the text books that are needed. My sister, science and biology, is constantly using her own money just so that the kids have the supplies need to do the labs that she feels will benefit them!

As a parent I also find it disturbing that a teacher would touch a fifth graders breast! That scares the shiot out me honestly, but how dare you sit on your pedastals and apply that to all of the teachers and to the public school system as a whole!! Our children are our future and without these teachers our future would look mighty bleak!!

Oh and I have met some kids and adults who were home schooled and for the most part I found them to be quite socially inept!

Fresh,
I don't think it was meant like that.
But life is unpredictable, you think by sending your kid to school you can prevent things from happening, but you can't. It's called a live performance, there are no dress rehearsals, so people deal with it the only way they can think of. They don't blame an individual because it's easier to blame the system.

Fresh,
I don't think it was meant like that.
But life is unpredictable, you think by sending your kid to school you can prevent things from happening, but you can't. It's called a live performance, there are no dress rehearsals, so people deal with it the only way they can think of. They don't blame an individual because it's easier to blame the system.

Being a single parent homeschooling is not an option but we have a good school system here so I have to put some faith in them.My son needs to experience all types of things and people and there is a calculated risk in everything.Homeschooling would deprive him of that valubale social lesson.We obviously need to check potential teachers out with as much rigor as we would someone pursuing a security clearance.

my expierence with homeschooling seems to ba a lot better than others. I find them polite, helpful, honest, well learned, drug free, hardworking and willing to take resposibility for thier actions.... unlike most public fool system grads who cant even make change without a machine, and who will lie and cheat as a matter of course. You cant get a decent days work out of any i have hired. Thier too concerned with video games or sports, or making excuses for why they havent done anything all day. Ready to sue at the slightest thing.
The school here is basketball happpy. We got a federal grant for improvements, as the area is growing. They built a second Gym with it. Now The classrooms are bulging with too many students. Not one basketball star has graduated from here either. Plus there is the constant police presence, the counselors taking the kids aside and questioning the kids about thier parents, everything from eating habits to drug use and obesity, ect., exposure to the new thinking about everything but God, which is not allowed. You can be anything but a christian in the modern schools. these reasons and a lot more would preclude me from ever allowing a kid of mine to go there. these kids know exactly how to manipulate a system that wants to coddle them, wont "hurt thier feelings" by disaplining them, or drug them into submission WHERE A LITTLE TOUGH LOVE WOULD HAVE SOLVED THE PROBLEM.

HOMESHOOLING IS not an option for only two reasons: the kid is smarter than the parents, or the parents wont make it a priority. You can if you decide to, after all, the most important thing you will ever do is raise your kids. "dont have time to do it right" is not an reason, its a cop out. . There are always ways, you just have to want it badly enough.

Great Rambill....don't even start to tell me that because I place my children in a public school that they are not my top priority!! Do you have kids and if so who raised them and if it was you did you home school them? And if you did then who fed them? Who clothed them? Who in the hell kept a roof over their heads and the power turned on? Do not begin to discuss whether or not my kids are my first priority! I happen to view the public school system differently than you do that does in no way make my parenting skills neglectful or a "cop out"!!

Everything I do is for my children and I like my daughters school and teachers!! Just because you have had a bad experience w/ public schools does not give you the right to generalize that experience to every school!! There are a lot of good teachers out there who give all they can to make sure our children get a good education! It is people like you that makes their job even harder than it already is!

uh huh. does you school teach creationisn as another theory?
do they have holiday seasons instead of christmas?
some people can in fact raise decent kids in the public fool system, but its an uphill battle. as for affording kids, money has never been a problem. i use a concept i like to call hard work and it seems to work well for me. If i had a kid, they would be well provided for.
the public fool systems are full of liberals spreading thier half truths. My sister had to actually deprogram one of her kids from being a flaming liberal because of it. in all there is a lot more bad than good in the fool system,there are exceptions of course however.
In my church you wont find one public fool system student. If someone is having problems with money, ect,for schoolin we all help them. I teach several classes for the kiddies, model rocketry, rockhounding, construction, and the shooting sports to mention four of the more popular.

"If you had a kid"?
This discussion is over!

Im sorry if raising your kid cuts into your bar time.... lol

Save your advice for when you are an actual parent


Nice try w/ the dig that is totally off subject though!

ive been involved with this public school mess probably longer than you have. Was accused of rape once by a kid who didnt like me making him do his homework . I could cite enough cases to bury you in facts. I raised four kids, though they wernt mine. iVE SEEN PEOPLE GO TO PRISON FOR DOING NOTHIMG MORE THAN DISAPLINING THIER KIDS. Jonnie runs off to school, tells someone a lie about being raped, and they loose everything, all because johnnie wanted to play video games instead of doing the dishes. I was lucky, i was able to pull 54,000 out of my arse to pay for a good attorney. Could you if you were forced to defend yourself against such an accusation? IVE SEEN COUNSELORS COERCE KIDS, TELLING THEM WHAT TO SAY TO CONVICT. In all the cases ive seen, the parents always loose. Why would i put myself in that situation again? NOT GONNA HAPPEN.