Schools covering up abuse
Educators accused of sexual misconduct still hired to teach
School officials in east Texas didn’t want Kip McFarlin around their students.
For years he had crossed the line in conversations with teenage girls, using sexually suggestive language and even telling one student he’d date her if he were younger, according to the school’s investigation.
By 2005, administrators at Orangefield Independent School District, about a two-hour drive outside Houston, had investigated complaints by six students.
But when it came time to deal with the Orangefield High School football coach, administrators didn’t fire McFarlin or report him to police. They didn’t even notify Texas education officials who had the power to take away his teaching license.
Instead, they hid his behavior from state regulators, parents and coaches.
All McFarlin had to do was go teach somewhere else.
“This incident does not have to end McFarlan’s (sic) career,” school district attorney Karen L. Johnson wrote in a 2005 letter to thensuperintendent Mike Gentry. In the letter,
Johnson recommended the district negotiate “a graceful exit” for the teacher.
Less than two years later, McFarlin, then 38, landed a job at a nearby school district, where no one had any idea about his past problems.
In 2011, he had sex with one of his students, a 16-year-old girl.
McFarlin was convicted of sexual assault and is serving an eightyear prison sentence.
Despite decades of repeated sexabuse scandals — from the Catholic Church to the Boy Scouts to scores of media reports identifying problem teachers — America’s public schools continue to conceal the actions of dangerous educators in ways that allow them to stay in the classroom.
A yearlong USA TODAY NETWORK investigation found that education officials put children in harm’s way by covering up evidence of abuse, keeping allegations secret and making it easy for abusive teachers to find jobs elsewhere.
As a result, schoolchildren across the nation continue to be beaten, raped and harassed by their teachers while government officials at every level stand by and do nothing.
In the most comprehensive national review of teacher discipline to date, USA TODAY examined educator misconduct and licensing databases from every state, reviewed thousands of pages of court filings and employment records, and surveyed state education officials to determine how teachers who engage in misconduct remain in the education system. Among the findings:
State education agencies across the country have ignored a federal ban on “passing the trash” intended to prevent secrecy deals with suspected abusers. These contracts hide details of sexual behavior and sometimes pay teachers to quit their jobs quietly.
The secrecy makes it easier for troubled teachers to find new jobs working with children. At least 100 teachers who lost their licenses because of alleged physical or sexual misconduct are still working with children or young adults today.
Private schools and youth organizations are especially at risk. They are left on their own to background check new hires and generally have no access to the one tracking system of teachers who were disciplined by state authorities.
Despite the risks, schools of all kinds still regularly fail to do the most basic of background checks. A private high school in Louisiana hired a teacher who was a registered sex offender in Texas. It was students using a simple web search who uncovered his past.
School administrators are rarely penalized for failing to report resignations of problem teachers to
state licensing officials. While 41 states have laws requiring public school administrators to report the firing or resignation of a teacher to state education officials, violations of those laws rarely have consequences.
This isn’t supposed to be happening anymore.
A series of high-profile abuse cases and media investigations in the 1990s and 2000s put a spotlight on lax regulations by government officials at every level.
A few states, including Florida, Missouri and Oregon, instituted tough new laws and regulations to crack down on abusive teachers and publicly report their names. Congress passed a law in December 2015 requiring states to ban school districts from secretly passing problem teachers to other jurisdictions.
But none of those reforms closed the gaping holes plaguing the nation’s teacher screening system. Inconsistencies in state background check rules and the lack of a government-run tracking system for serious teacher misconduct continue to hinder efforts to root out problematic educators.
“I’m not against what’s been put into law,” said Charol Shakeshaft, professor of educational leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University who has studied teacher misconduct. “It just isn’t much of a solution.”
Although abusive teachers make up only a fraction of 1% of the nation’s teaching corps, USA TODAY found dozens of teachers who lost one job after being accused of abusive behavior and had no trouble getting hired somewhere else.
They include a New Jersey teacher who molested five elementary school students, an Oregon substitute teacher who reached under a table to touch a student’s genitals and an Illinois teacher who forced elementary students to eat food off his crotch. In each instance, the teacher had been disciplined for sexual misbehavior in a prior school district.
“It’s enraging when I read these cases about a teacher who has been well-known for abusing little children for over 20 years,” said Charles Hobson, a professor of business management at Indiana University Northwest who studies teacher misconduct, “and nobody — nobody — has picked the phone up and called child protective services or the police. That’s crushing.”
USA TODAY found examples in nearly every state, with the secrecy often cemented in legally binding contracts.
In New Jersey, Montville Township Public Schools wanted to get rid of first-grade teacher Jason Fennes in 2010 after it received complaints he had engaged in misconduct with his female elementary school students, including inappropriately touching them and allowing them to sit on his lap.
But the district did not report the accusations to police. They signed a contract stating that only his positions and dates of employment would be disclosed to prospective future employers, and that “no further information will be provided.”
Less than two months after resigning, Fennes was hired for a teaching job at Cedar Hill Prep School, a nearby private academy.
Local prosecutors in two counties brought charges against Fennes after victims from both schools came forward. He entered guilty pleas in both cases in September, admitting to molesting at least four female students and having sex with a 15-year-old athlete he coached.
In Illinois, teacher Jon White molested children in one school district before quietly moving to a second where he struck again. Pennsylvania coach Eric Romig was forced out of a private school for misconduct before taking a job with a public school district, where he had sex with a 16-yearold. Both men were convicted.
Using disciplinary records from every state, USA TODAY identified more than 100 educators whose public school teaching credentials were revoked or surrendered for serious misconduct, yet continued to work with youths in different environments.
From youth sports leagues to church groups to tutoring groups, employees or volunteers are often hired with no background checks at all. The analysis shows how easily those accused of misconduct can dodge oversight — especially if they move into private schools or private coaching jobs.
Only nine states require background checks for volunteers in sports activities. And while most states have laws in place requiring licensed public school teachers to undergo background checks, private schools typically aren’t required to conduct background checks under any state or federal law.
Sexual and physical misconduct by educators can be difficult to predict, and school officials — including those in Orangefield — have said they didn’t report misconduct in some case because it did not amount to a crime.
Johnson, the attorney of Orangefield schools, in her 2005 letter to the superintendent laying out the terms of McFarlin’s “graceful exit,” advised the district to “agree to a neutral recommendation or positive recommendation for his coaching duties, etc.”
“I do not feel that you have to report to SBEC under §21.006 Tex Educ Code,” Johnson advised the district. “He is not guilty of abuse or an unlawful act with a student, just inappropriate and stupid remarks for a professional to make.”