Schools struggle with teacher sex cases

Kim Smith

Friday, Sept. 20, 2002 | 5:31 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION: Sept. 22, 2002

He was the man of her dreams. She snuck off with him whenever she could. They named their future children. They exchanged love letters and stolen kisses.

She was like any other 14-year-old girl in love for the first time.

But Jeremy Green was no love-struck boy.

He was her 27-year-old soccer coach at Mojave High School, and their "love affair" is a crime in the state of Nevada.

He is now in prison serving four to 10 years, and she is struggling to get over him.

Her parents? They are suing the Clark County School District.

Before it's all over, they may not be the only ones.

During the last 24 months, 15 school district employees have been prosecuted on sexual crimes ranging from possession of child pornography to child molestation to having sex with a student, which became a crime in 1997.

The incidents have raised concerns about the way the school district hires and screens employees. Critics wonder if the district has done enough to protect children.

"It's a problem that's been swept under the rug for several years," said Terri Miller, president of SESAME or Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct and Exploitation. "A lot of times it's not even recognized as a problem. It's handled as just a little tryst between a teacher and a student."

SESAME is a national nonprofit group formed in 1995 by a New York mother whose two sons were abused by educators. The group's headquarters are in Pahrump, where Miller lives.

Miller lobbied for the 1997 bill after a Pahrump teacher, Joseph Peterson, was sentenced to life in prison for sexually assaulting a student at the school.

Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Doug Herndon said that until the law passed, it was legal for a teacher to have consensual sex with a student as long as that student was 16 or older because the age of consent in Nevada is 16.

Now, teachers convicted of having consensual sex with a student 16 or older faces a one- to six-year prison sentence. Teachers convicted of consensual sex with a 14- or 15-year-old face sentences of one to 10 years.

"I'm not aware of any other state that has a statute specifically like ours, one that addresses teacher-student sex," Herndon said.

The law was deemed necessary because -- just as with law enforcement officers, doctors and therapists -- teachers are placed in a position of authority and trust, Herndon said.

When that trust is betrayed or when the authority colors a relationship, there need to be consequences -- especially when the child is too young to understand all of the relationship's ramifications, Herndon said.

"When you're a teenager and a guy with raging hormones, you're not thinking of the long-term effects of sleeping with a teacher, but when you're older you'll probably realize you were not ready emotionally to handle that sort of relationship," Herndon said. "That relationship will end up affecting a teen's social and sexual relationships in the future."

Miller said studies reveal that children sexually abused by teachers often suffer the same consequences as any child sexually abused: eating disorders, depression, suicidal thoughts, substance abuse, trust issues, inappropriate sexual behavior and relationship problems.

The psychological damage is the same whether the child was touched inappropriately or believed the teacher was madly in love with her.

There are those, however, who see little harm in a consensual relationship between a teen and a teacher -- especially if the relationship involves an older female teacher and a young boy, such as the Tanya Hadden case.

Hadden, a 33-year-old San Bernardino, Calif., teacher, was arrested earlier this year after being found in Las Vegas with a 15-year-old student.

Although the boy willingly accompanied Hadden, she was charged with first-degree kidnapping, which is punishable by life in prison.

Hadden avoided that fate by pleading guilty in August to second-degree kidnapping, sexual conduct between teacher and student and statutory sexual seduction. She was sentenced last week to five years probation, but had faced a sentence of two to 26 years.

Deputy Public Defender Steve Immerman, her attorney, criticized the district attorney's office for filing the kidnapping charge, telling one newspaper, "Bully for the kid for putting a notch in his belt by learning the language of love from an older woman."

School districts across the country often do little when allegations arise of affairs or other inappropriate behavior between teachers and students, Miller said.

School officials sometimes believe the affairs are minor or their concerns only lay with the district itself, Miller said.

"I believe they put saving money and saving facing above saving children," Miller said. "It can be be very expensive to fire a teacher because it sometimes ends in expensive litigation.

"Plus, school districts try to save their reputations. They don't want a dark cloud hovering over them and they want to minimize the public panic within a community."

In Green's case, the victims' parents allege that Mojave High principal Andre Denson failed to report Green despite knowing about the relationship. Instead Denson reprimanded Green verbally and in writing, they allege.

In their lawsuit, the parents allege such inaction "clearly created an educational philosophy which condoned Green's sexual deviance."

Denson declined to comment for this story.

So far, Green's is the only case out of the recent 15 to result in a lawsuit.

"If not me, who will?" the girl's father said in a written statement provided to the Sun. "Who will bring this criminal and morally wrong conduct to the public's attention? Where is the public outrage?

"How many sexual assaults have to occur between CCSD employees and our innocent, precious children before there are real consequences? (Aren't) almost a dozen cases in the year 2001 too many? I, for one, think that just one case is too many."

Former elementary teacher Brad Allen, 45, taught in three different local elementary schools before being charged with seven counts of lewdness with a child involving six female students over a five-year period. Prosecutors suspect there may be at least four other victims. He faces two trials early next year. He maintains his innocence.

According to police reports, three of the alleged victims reported his activities to a school counselor, but the counselor did not report them to superiors and told the girls to talk to their parents -- something few victims are willing to do.

Many children are ashamed of what has happened, embarrassed about the intimacy of the acts or don't believe anyone will believe them rather than an adult.

Until his daughter talked to him, one father said, "I thought (Allen) was a great guy. He was a good teacher, and he really seemed to care about the kids. The whole class loved him."

Assistant Superintendent Edward Goldman declined to comment on specific cases. He said, however, that he is confident the school district is doing everything possible to protect students.

Greater awareness

He also says the increasing number of cases is more because of a greater awareness among victims and the officials to whom they report incidents than to a growing number of predators.

"It happens. It's just a question of whether they are going to get caught," Goldman said."I think more got caught last year. I also think that there is going to be a certain percentage of this kind of thing in all settings, not just schools."

The prosecution trend supports that belief, said Herndon, who heads Clark County's special victims unit and prosecuted the first teacher to be tried under the 1997 law.

"When we tried the first case in 1998, we had a lot of information that this was going on in a lot of schools and that we hadn't hit the tip of the iceberg yet," Herndon said. "Last year they were coming at us from left and right."

In 2001, eight teachers were prosecuted on sexual-abuse charges; the year before three were. Last year, three teachers were prosecuted for possessing child pornography, none the year before.

Still, the number of local cases reflects well on the school district's 13,000 teachers for its 250,000 students, officials say.

"Even though one case in which a teacher behaves inappropriately with a student is too many, I think the low numbers show how dependable, responsible and accountable teachers in Clark County are," said John Jasonek, executive director of the Clark County Education Association, the teachers' union.

Grooming victims

Inappropriate behavior, when it happens, generally falls into two categories, according to Charol Shakeshaft, a professor at Hofstra University in Long Island, N.Y., who has studied sexual abuse and harassment in schools for 12 years.

"One group of teachers has made bad decisions, they don't have good boundaries and they are emotionally or professionally immature. If you tell them to stop, they will," Shakeshaft said. "The other group is pedophiles who will, no matter what you say or do, find a way to victimize children."

Both groups prey on the children's immaturity and target those with low self- esteem, she said. They make them feel special by flattering them, consoling them or writing them love letters. Sometimes they try to gain the child's sympathy by complaining about an unhappy home life.

Once a child's emotional barriers have been lowered, it's much easier for predators to get past their physical barriers, Miller said.

"I call it raping the mind before raping the body," she said.

Children seldom lie about sexual abuse, Miller said. In fact, Education Week followed 244 cases through the judicial system during a six-month study in 1998. Only two claims werefalse.

Moreover, "statistically, a teacher who engages in such behavior will have worked in three others jurisdictions before he is discovered and stopped," Miller said.

Clark County and state Education Department officials have tightened background checks to try to catch serial abusers.

A regulation in effect since October prohibits Nevada officials from licensing a teacher whose certification from another state has been "suspended, revoked or otherwise restricted pursuant to disciplinary actions," Keith Rheault, state deputy superintendent, said.

The school district and the state require both criminal-background and fingerprints checks, officials said.

Still, some have gotten through. Two teachers charged last year, Duane Johnson and Newell Leavitt, were hired despite allegations against them in Utah.

Johnson lost his teacher's license and was fired by Provo High School after he impregnated a former student -- a student he said he began dating after she graduated. He was hired by Clark County School District before the regulation went into effect in October.

Johnson, who was charged with lewdness with a minor, will appear in court Oct. 4.

Leavitt, who was sentenced to two to eight years in prison for statutory sexual seduction of a Las Vegas teen, was accused of impregnating a Cedar City High School freshman in 1987, but paternity tests later showed he was not the father.

Since neither was charged criminally, the background checks did not show those histories, and reference checks with the other school districts did not uncover the allegations.

Sometimes fingerprint checks take too long and a possible offender gets on the payroll.

Earlier this year, Goldman said, he learned three months after hiring a teacher from another school district that the teacher had entered a plea agreement in another state after being charged with sodomy years ago.

Goldman said he fired the teacher and promptly called the man's past employer to complain they weren't forthcoming about the man's background. School district officials there said they believed the teacher when he said the victim had lied.

Goldman said the Clark County School District does its best to keep teachers who abuse children out of the classroom, period.

Allegations are not only reported to the appropriate agencies and action taken against the teacher, but future employers also are warned.

For example, if Green were to be interviewed by another district when he gets out of prison, Goldman said, "I would say we need a signed release form saying that he would hold us harmless for releasing information about him. But then I'd go a step further and make sure they knew that there was important information they needed to know about him and that all we need is that release."

Herndon said he sympathizes with the school district.

"It's hard to educate teachers on this subject, because it's like 'Duh, don't have sex with your students,' " Herndon said. "The school district's education efforts are probably better relegated to making sure teachers know what the reporting laws are."

Miller said she applauds the district's efforts, but it could do more.

A videotape on sexual abuse and harassment-reporting shown to teachers at the beginning of the year was a good start, but the district might consider periodic background and fingerprint checks after teachers are hired, she said.

"If they've committed a crime in another state while on vacation, a hit would show up," Miller said.

Students also need to be taught about appropriate boundaries and what should be reported and to whom, she said.

In addition, judges need to take such cases more seriously. Too often the teachers get probation, she said.

In the 15 cases since September 2000, seven teachers received probation, three were sentenced to prison and five are unresolved.

Miller points to a Florida Education Department study that showed a 13 percent recidivism rate for offenders, who were placed on probation for five years in that state. Once off probation, however, the recidivism rate jumped to 50 percent within five years, Miller noted.

Herndon said judges consider a consensual relationship between teens and teachers less abhorrent than when victims are raped and physically injured.

But Miller says that is the wrong attitude to take. The victims in each circumstance suffer the same consequences. They often commit suicide, abuse drugs or alcohol, develop eating disorders or have relationship problems.

One alleged victim of Brad Allen's blamed herself, her father said.

"She thought she had done something to provoke it and she thought she would get into trouble if she said anything," he said. "That's what's so sad about all of this."

Meanwhile, as police continue their investigations and prosecutors prepare for trial, the victims go on with their lives -- some convinced they were never victims at all, others attending weekly counseling sessions.

Green's 14-year-old victim was on suicide watch in a local hospital on the day Green was sentenced, desperate at the thought of never seeing him again.

In a letter written two months before he was sentenced, the girl alternated between filling him in on the daily happenings at school and begging him again and again for his reassurance that he still loved her.

She also noted she needed a new ring to last her until her 18th birthday and the day he would be freed from prison. The last one he gave her had left a green ring around her finger, she said.

"Not to nag or anything, but if you're gonna give me a ring to last till Jan. 2004, then I think it will have to be a little more expensive so my finger won't rot off," she wrote.

She signed the letter with her first name and his last, using hearts to offset the smiley face below her signature.

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