The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
State looks at training, policies to combat sexual abuse in schools
Two Connecticut teachers were arrested this month after they were accused of sexually assaulting minors, stressing the urgency for legislators to develop policies that will establish stronger procedures to report incidents and protect students.
One teacher was Andrew Park, a 33-year-old who has resigned as a fifthgrade teacher at Stamford’s Strawberry Hill Elementary after being accused of groping a dozen female students. The other was 35year-old James Hansen, a former math teacher at Middletown High School accused of sexually assaulting a teenage student on school grounds.
These are just two among a series of school staff employees in Connecticut who have been accused of sexual misconduct in recent years.
“These incidents always underscore the need for more — more training, more transparency, more education,” said state Rep. Liz Linehan, D-Cheshire, co-chair of the state legislature’s Committee on Children. The committee has championed multiple bills on the issue.
In recent years, administrators in other school districts — Plymouth, New London, Hartford and Stonington — were accused of ignoring complaints of inappropriate behavior from teachers, particularly adult sexual contact with students. Law enforcement investigations resulted in arrests of teachers accused
of the behavior, and sometimes the administrators who failed to report it.
The Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate, tasked with monitoring and evaluating agencies that are obligated to protect children, found that many of these districts had deficiencies in their Title IX regulations, and that “failure to report sexual abuse may well be a symptom of broader system weaknesses around prevention, detection and response.”
State legislators and agencies have taken steps to combat this issue. They've focused on training school employees to recognize inappropriate behavior through a new bystander training, and are working to ensure school districts know how to correctly handle these incidents with a Title IX toolkit.
There's also more legislation in the works.
“I would love to tell you that we can pass one comprehensive piece of legislation and make an incredible difference, but that's not how this legislature works,” said Linehan, who has made this issue a top priority since she was elected in 2016. “So, we're continually doing smaller bits and pieces, one building off the other, which will have a similar intended effect.”
Linehan believes her bills over the past few years have had an effect on recognizing and reporting abuse, leading to more arrests.
"I don't think the problem is getting worse," she said. "I think we've made it easier and safer to recognize and report the problems."
Connecticut law has some safeguards in place to ensure people with histories of abusive behavior are not working in schools.
Districts are required to complete a state and national background check on newly hired educators and paraprofessionals, along with checking the Department of Children and Families child abuse and neglect registry.
Before hiring an individual, districts are required to verify whether a person left employment in a previous district due to an investigation of abuse, neglect or sexual misconduct.
Connecticut also participates in the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification, which maintains a national clearinghouse of certified educators who have had disciplinary action against their certificates in all 50 states and some Canadian provinces. The database helps keep offenders from leaving one state and going to another when they've had disciplinary action.
Research and surveys suggest that the rate of school employees sexually abusing children is likely higher than what is officially reported, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office. A report from the U.S. Department of Education in 2004 stated that nearly 1 in 10 students — or about 9.6 percent — were victims of sexual abuse by school personnel at some point during their academic careers.
Children with disabilities are almost three times more likely to become targets of adult sexual misconduct, and those with intellectual and mental health disabilities appear to be most at risk, according to a 2021 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“Unfortunately, child sexual abuse is much more prevalent than it's reported, and I think also much more prevalent than people realize or want to know, or want to grapple with,” said Sarah Eagan, who leads the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate.
And, oftentimes, she said parents believe they can spot someone who would exploit a child, or that they'd know whether their child was in danger.
“But the reality is that those kinds of behaviors, unfortunately, happen wherever children are,” Eagan said. “There's no school district, there's no camp, there's no place that's protected from that risk.”
Current policy
A federal statute requires school districts and other institutions to have robust frameworks for preventing, identifying and responding to adult sexual misconduct, along with other concerns such as bullying.
Title IX requires every school district to have a procedure for complaints and a Title IX coordinator who ensures training on this process and other requirements.
Eagan said children and parents also need to be aware of this. If parents are not familiar with Title IX or who the coordinator is for their school, “that's a problem in their district,” she said.
“They should bring that right to their superintendent and ask that that information be sent to parents so they have that information, they know what it is, and they know who to go to if they have a concern or a complaint,” she noted.
Of the several Connecticut school districts the agency has investigated, Eagan said she has yet to find one that was fully compliant. Many districts said they have few, if any, Title IX complaints each year and that should not be the case, she said.
“That tells us that districts are not understanding how to implement Title IX in the context of their everyday work,” she said. “On school climate, on bullying, on handling complaints that come from students, parents and teachers.”
This doesn't necessarily mean the district isn't recording these complaints, but they may not be thinking of them as Title IX concerns, Eagan noted. This leads to them not complying with the requirements, such as providing support and services to the complainant, involving the coordinator and having due process for the person alleged to have done something wrong.
The state enacted a law in June 2023 to try to get districts up to speed.
Public Act 22-66 tasked state agencies with creating a Title IX toolkit for schools. This toolkit will provide information to districts regarding the prevention, identification and response to adult sexual misconduct.
This would ensure there is a framework for students, parents, guardians, school employees and others to report inappropriate behavior, as well as enhance districts' procedures for handling misconduct.
The Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity and Opportunity, which was charged with creating a working group to develop the toolkit, said it is working with partners to create a summary of the key state and federal Title IX requirements, and how these requirements affect student rights.
The working group will be made up of representatives from several state agencies and organizations. The group has a July 1 deadline, but Linehan said she believes the toolkit could take longer than expected and the due date may need to get extended.
If the deadline is not extended, the law says the state Department of Education will distribute this Title IX compliance toolkit to local and regional school boards by Oct. 1, and post the toolkit to the agency's website. Each school district is expected to implement this toolkit starting in the 2025-26 school year. Starting with the 2026-27 academic year, each school district will also submit an annual Title IX compliance report to the state Department of Education, the law states.
Linehan said parents may not see any drastic changes once the toolkit is implemented, but it will make it easier for families to report incidents. It will also teach school districts how to react to incidents and conduct investigations.
“I think generally the schools want to do the right thing, but there's really not enough training for them to know and understand how to implement this complicated federal law,” she said.
Another law, passed in May 2022, created bystander training for school employees. The training, which is available online and in-person, outlines inappropriate behavior between school employees and students and when it should be reported.
One part of the training focuses on grooming, a tactic in which someone “methodically builds a trusting relationship with a child or young adult, their family, and community to manipulate, coerce, or force the child or young adult to engage in sexual activities,” the training states. It also describes red flags such as showing favoritism, finding excuses to spend time alone with someone and building trust with families and communities to gain access to a person.
The bystander training was first made available in the 2023-24 school year. State law indicates school employees must complete the bystander training, along with a separate mandated reporter training, when they are hired and then every three years.
However, state Department of Children and Families Commissioner Jodi Hill-Lilly said the curriculum is updated annually, and the agency recommends school employees take the training each year so they “remain aware of enhancements to reporting concerns of adult sexual misconduct.”
Hill-Lilly said consistent training for school personnel on boundaries, sexual misconduct and reporting is “imperative.”
“We want to ensure that this is done consistently by all schools on a regular basis,” she said.
Along with the bystander training, this law also allows agencies to better understand the prevalence of the problem.
This will be through new questions asked on the Connecticut School Health Survey, which is administered biennially to students in grades 9 through 12 at randomly selected high schools if the department receives federal funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In the May 2022 act, state agencies were tasked with developing questions to assess the risk of youths becoming victims of sexual assault or misconduct by an adult.
What else is being done?
Several pieces of legislation have been proposed by the state's Committee on Children this legislative session to improve policy regarding child sexual abuse.
One bill, HB 5159, aims to establish a task force to study the responsiveness of state agencies and the judicial branch to issues concerning child sexual abuse. The task force will examine policies and practices to identify opportunities to detect, mitigate, prevent and effectively respond to the abuse.
Linehan said she's wanted to propose this bill for a while. Though agencies want to do the right thing, she said there seems to be “blind spots” when it comes to child abuse and adult sexual misconduct.
The bill would bring agencies together to determine what each is doing, and how they could work together to combat the issue.
“We're not getting anywhere because everyone's only going an inch deep, when the problem lies feet or meters down,” she said.
Another bill, HB 5161, would change the term “child pornography” in state law to “child sexual abuse material.”
“We want to actually call it out for what it is,” Linehan said. “Changing that terminology will also go a long way to explaining the severity.”
Linehan said she also would like to see penalties increased for child sexual abuse material. She referred to a report from the National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction from 2010 that says data has shown that child sex abuse material offenses often are linked to “contact offenses,” or sex offenses against children.
Another bill, HB 5262, builds on the Connecticut School Health Survey, requiring school administrators to complete a survey on their own starting on July 1, 2026. The survey would ask administrators about what resources are available to investigate and address when a child is a victim of adult sexual misconduct, whether in or out of school.
“We also want to know the adults in these kids' lives have enough resources to help them through the trauma,” Linehan said.
Eagan said only prevention framework ensures all members of the child-serving community, including organizations, parents, families and students, are trained about their roles and responsibilities, as well as making sure there are policies and procedures governing how adults interact with children.
The Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity & Opportunity said, “prevention and training of all school employees are some of the most important steps that should be taken by all school districts.”
Parents should also speak to their kids about risk and safety in age-appropriate ways, Eagan said.
“You've got to talk about it early and often,” Eagan said. “And give kids tools of what they can say to stay safe and how they can talk to you about it or another adult if they have a concern.”
To report sexual misconduct, harassment or abuse, call 800-842-2288.
If you have a concern that you or someone else may have been the victim of sexual abuse or harassment, you can get help with the Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence by calling 8602829881 or info@endsexualviolencect.org.
To file a Title IX complaint with the federal government, visit https://ocrcas.ed.gov.
To learn about how to speak to your child about this issue, visit https://www.rainn.org/articles/how-can-i-protect-my-childsexual-assault.