Prior Reports of Inappropriate Behavior Feed Into Current Claims Against School

A California school teacher is facing sexual abuse charges from incidents occurring in 2021. According to a news investigation, the school system had reports of inappropriate behavior in 2012 and 2014, and its discipline fell short of full dismissal. Attorneys and activists, of course, have jumped on those prior allegations to claim that the school system didn't care and covered up his bad behavior.

The facts as reported, however, don't support that conclusion. The school counseled the teacher, and reported the allegations to Child Protective Services. CPS didn't take action, beyond saying that it would forward the report to law enforcement. The police confirmed that there was some sort of report in 2014, but no law enforcement follow-up.

It's easy to say in hindsight that the school should have fired this teacher in 2014. However, it's far from clear that California or federal law would allow a school to fire a teacher for allegations that no government agency deemed worthy of investigation. Furthermore, the reports in 2014 were very different from those in 2021, and there were no claims between 2014 and 2021. So, the school might have been able to do more or it might not.

The takeaway here is that hindsight is unforgiving. When dealing with allegations of child maltreatment, youth-serving organizations have to juggle contradictory commands. We want to protect the children in our care, but firing employees for boundary violations may not be possible. Dire penalties also may not be the appropriate response for minor and correctable violations. There is no magic solution to these questions. What we do have to remember each time is that we have to be ready to answer (with documentation) future questions about why we made the decisions that we did.