Forsyth tackles issue several ways (NC)
- From: "Catherine" <catherine!!@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2007 21:41:44 -0500
http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ/MGArticle/WSJ_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1173353193096
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Forsyth tackles issue several ways
By Danielle Deaver, Journal Reporter
In January 2003, a local man began to suspect that his daughter was involved
with her band instructor.
During the weeks and months that followed, he learned of a sexual
relationship between his 16-year-old daughter and Timothy Christian Weaver,
29, a band instructor at East Forsyth High School.
In August 2003, Weaver was indicted on three felony sex charges in
connection with that relationship. He was convicted in January 2004 of
having an illegal sexual relationship with the student and was sentenced to
60 months probation, according to court records.
The names of the student and her family are not being published because of
the Winston-Salem Journal's policy of not identifying victims of sex crimes.
In the years after Weaver's conviction, the family has pursued changes in
the law that governs how school systems report abuse.
The father said he is glad that the school system has started dealing with
the issue with students and with teachers through video presentations for
students and intensified training for teachers. He said he believes that
the school system could do a more thorough job of compiling lists of
incidents and complaints against teachers, so that patterns could be found
before an actual assault occurs.
He also said he is working with local legislators to make changes to the
laws about what school systems have to report to the public about these
cases.
The family filed a lawsuit in 2005 against the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County
school system.
A jury found in favor of the family in 2006. The school system appealed, but
the system's insurance company recently settled the lawsuit for $275,000,
school attorney Drew Davis said.
The incident has been unimaginably damaging, the student's father said.
"Not only on our daughter, but on our entire family; it was devastating," he
said. "It put a wedge between us for a couple of years, because we're
trying to teach our child one thing and people in a position of authority
are telling her something else that is contrary to what we told our
children."
Even now, he said, he blocks the school system's public-access channel from
the family televisions so that they don't have to see the people who were
involved in the case.
His daughter, who transferred to a private school after the incident at East
Forsyth, is doing well as a senior in college, he said. She has made the
dean's list several times and will graduate on time.
She is just one victim of sexual abuse by a teacher in Forsyth County.
In the past 10 years, 12 school employees, mostly teachers, have been
arrested in connection with charges of sexual misconduct with a student.
Another seven have been suspended after such allegations. Several of the
criminal cases are still pending.
School officials said that they are aware of the problem.
"Unfortunately it's affected us one too many times,'' said Donny Lambeth,
the chairman of the Forsyth County school board. "Those things are
situations we cannot tolerate in any way, so we've got to do anything we can
to stop it."
New approaches
Locally, most allegations of sexual misconduct by teachers are investigated
by the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office, which provides school-resource
officers in many of the county's middle and high schools.
The sheriff's office has taken steps to make sure that it does not miss any
allegation that should be investigated, said Maj. Brad Stanley, a spokesman
for the sheriff's office.
The sheriff's office admitted last year that it failed to assign a detective
to investigate Robert William Watson, who taught at Clemmons Middle School,
after the sheriff's office received a report in June 2006 of an
inappropriate online conversation between Watson and a student.
As a result of that case, Stanley said, the criminal-investigations division
of the sheriff's office now reviews every report that comes through the
office - whether it comes from patrol, the jail, a school-resource officer
or any other division.
In addition, school officials have increased the amount and intensity of
teacher training about sexual-abuse issues. They said they have continued
to screen potential employees and have taken steps to make sure that
students know what is not appropriate, and what they should do if a teacher
or another adult makes them uncomfortable.
School-board members decided last year to begin showing the video A Time to
Tell to middle-school students. Starting this year, it will also be shown
to 10th-graders.
The video shows situations in which adults are trying to engage students in
inappropriate relationships, and encourages students to tell a trusted adult
about similar problems they encounter.
"I think for students, that issue of reporting and telling is a really
important thing, and they understand that if things are not right, don't
keep it to yourself," Superintendent Don Martin said.
School officials worked with community agencies, social workers and school
counselors before they showed the video, to make sure that they were
prepared to help students who came forward, said Kenneth Simington, the
assistant superintendent of student services.
A few students did report inappropriate actions by adults after seeing the
video, Simington said. It is unclear what the results of those reports were.
Schools will begin showing the video again next week. Parents have the
opportunity to see the video before the students do, and can choose to not
allow their children to see it.
Screening and training
Another area in which school officials are trying to improve is
communication with parents and with law-enforcement officers, something some
parents have criticized the system about, Lambeth said.
Lambeth said he believes that the state and federal governments could do
more to help school systems deal with the problem of sexual abuse of
students. Right now, there is no national database that coordinates
complaints or criminal actions against teachers, leaving school systems to
track down potential employees' pasts on their own.
"There needs to be some better-coordinated effort when there's been an
accusation or an investigation," he said. "At least you can get, if you're
looking at a future employee who's applying, you at least have that
information and you can do some follow-up work."
The Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school system has a policy of firing anyone
who has been found to have had an inappropriate relationship with a student,
Martin said.
"One of the things we have done after the fact is we do not let anyone
resign in these cases.
They are dismissed and notification of the Department of Public Instruction
and the State Board (of Education)," Martin said. "We do not allow teachers
to resign. Some systems look at that as 'We got rid of the problem.'"
Not allowing teachers to resign, "creates a lot more public stuff,'' Martin
said, "but I think it's an important thing to do."
Every year, Forsyth County screens more than 1,000 potential employees and
"Level Two" volunteers - those who could be alone with students, said Dave
Fairall, the school system's human-resources director.
The system hires a private company to do the background checks. The company
uses the Social Security numbers of potential employees and volunteers to
track down all of their previous addresses. The company then checks for any
criminal records.
The searches can be time-consuming and expensive - anywhere from $5 to
search just in North Carolina to thousands of dollars for people who have
lived overseas.
Principals or supervisors in charge of hiring are required to contact
potential employees' previous supervisor, and must fill out a form that
details the information they get.
School officials used to fingerprint new employees and send the prints to
the State Bureau of Investigations, but that only revealed if any felony
charges had been filed in North Carolina.
When Fairall arrived in 1997, he recommended that the school system start
doing more extensive background work. Those checks have prevented the school
system from hiring people with criminal records that might otherwise not
have been known, he said. He could not specify what percent of applicants
are turned away based on background checks.
Fairall said he believes that the local school system does more than others.
"I think we're probably in the top 5 to 10 percent of the state in terms of
the rigor of the checks that we do, and I frequently get calls from my
counterparts in other parts of the state, wanting to know what we do," he
said. "We take it very seriously. We have the public's most precious
resources, and that's something we have to take seriously."
Martin cautioned that even if a background check shows that a new employee
has a clean criminal record, there can still be problems. A lot of times,
sexual relationships can stem from inappropriately personal relationships
between teachers and students.
"It's where the line gets blurry about where you are in the level of
conversation. There are obviously innocent, appropriate exchanges,'' he
said.
Teachers, however, can get involved in personal conversations that they
believe are innocent but which can lead to problems, he said.
New teachers get training every year about teacher-student relationships and
where to draw the line, Martin said.
In fact, such training has been expanded, said Davis, the system's attorney.
"It's grown a little bit over the past few years; it's grown because it's
had to because of the incidents we've had here," he said.
Davis said he talks with new teachers about the clear lines - what
constitutes criminal misconduct under state law and what will get teachers
fired and their licenses revoked under school regulations. He also has the
more difficult job of talking about the subtle boundaries that should govern
teacher-student relationships.
"
We get into things like kids expressing their sexuality in front of teachers
in a one-on-one setting," he said. "There's a balance between I want to be
a good teacher, I want to have an open door, I want to be receptive, to
handling issues that are better left to a therapist or counselor."
Davis said he thinks that the school system is doing everything it can.
"I really wish there were some kind of serum we could give everybody or
blood test, and that test said 'sex offender' and we could keep that kind of
person away from our kids, but that doesn't exist," he said.
? Journal reporter Patrick Wilson contributed to this story.
Sex-abuse cases in local schools
Local schools have had a number of cases of sexual abuse by teachers or
accusations against teachers over the past 10 years.
? In August 1998, Leroy Wise Jr., a teacher's aide at South Park High School
(now Carter Vocational High School), pleaded guilty to charges stemming from
his involvement with a mentally handicapped student. He was sentenced to six
years in prison.
? In November 1998, six teachers at East Forsyth High School were suspended
for
immoral behavior and for drinking beer in a school locker room. The immoral
behavior included a videotape that showed a teacher having sex with
students. The school board fired Douglas B. Shields, a physical-education
teacher and assistant football coach. Shields eventually pleaded guilty to
one count of disseminating obscene materials and one count of third-degree
sexual exploitation of a minor and taking indecent liberties with a minor.
He was sentenced to 90 days in jail.
? In June 2000, Bobby O. Curry Sr. was charged with taking indecent
liberties with a student and taking indecent liberties with a child. Curry,
a former physical education teacher and track coach at Forsyth Country Day
School, was convicted in 2001 of one count of first-degree statutory rape,
four counts of first-degree statutory sexual offense and five counts of
taking indecent liberties with a minor. A judge sentenced him to a minimum
of 36 years in prison.
? In January 2001, Eric Darrell Kesler, a chorus and humanities teacher
at West Forsyth High School, was charged with four counts of sex offense
with a 17-year-old student. In February, he pleaded guilty and received a
24- to 30-month suspended sentence, and was put on probation for five years.
? In April 2001, First Sgt. Donald Chumley, a Junior ROTC instructor at East
Forsyth, was arrested after being accused of having sex with a 14-year-old
student while on a field trip in Iredell County. Chumley was convicted of
taking indecent liberties with a child in October 2002 and sentenced to 10
months in prison.
? In May 2003, the N.C. Department of Public Instruction suspended the
license of Timothy Christian Weaver, a former band teacher at East Forsyth
who was accused of having a sexual relationship with a student. At the time
the accusation was made, he had moved to Pender County and was teaching
there. In January 2004, he was convicted of having sex with the girl and
sentenced to 60 months probation. In October 2006, a jury awarded $400,000
to the student and her family in a civil lawsuit.
? In March 2004, Robert Fulton, a math teacher and coach at Glenn High
School, was charged with having sex with a 17-year-old student. That
October, he pleaded guilty to six felony counts of sexual activity with a
student by a teacher, and was sentenced to 10 to 12 months in prison. In
April 2006, the former student sued the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County school
board, alleging that it failed to take immediate action to stop a teacher's
sexual misconduct toward her. In June 2007, a jury found that the school
board was not liable for a consensual, sexual relationship between a teacher
and student.
? In February 2006, Susan Wiseman, a social-studies teacher at East Forsyth,
was suspended without pay after accusations of sexual misconduct with a
student. Although Wiseman was not charged with a crime, the school board
voted in March not to renew her employment contract. Wiseman also agreed to
surrender her teaching license.
? In September 2006, Robert William Watson Jr., a math and social-studies
teacher at Jefferson Middle School, was arrested and charged with six counts
of statutory sex offense against a victim who is 13, 14 or 15 years old;
three counts of indecent liberties with a student by a teacher; and nine
counts of taking indecent liberties with a child. In April, Watson was
indicted by a grand jury in Forsyth County on 31 counts of sex-offense
crimes against students. His case has not yet come to trial.
? In May 2007, Hubert Eugene Crosby, a substitute teacher, was charged with
having sexual contact with two high-school students. In July, Crosby was
charged in connection with a third case. His case has not yet come to trial.
? In August 2007, Melvin Jerome Fair, the athletics director at Southeast
Middle School, was charged with two counts of taking indecent liberties with
a child and two counts of taking indecent liberties with a student. His case
has not yet come to trial.
.
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