OPINION: Apparently it's no big deal
Twice last week, public school teachers in El Paso County have been let off easy after facing felony charges of sexual misconduct with children. It's par for the course, nationally. If sexual abuse of children were a disease, it would be considered an epidemic in American public schools.
On Wednesday, a former Wasson High School substitute teacher pleaded guilty to "harassment" for asking a 15-year-old male student to have sex with him.
Colorado Springs police say 73-year-old Lloyd Clark Jr., offered to pay the child $1,000 in return for his participation in a sex act. Police even recorded a call between the boy and the teacher, catching the teacher on tape offering to meet the student and pay him for sex.
This is serious stuff. Here we have a man who was paid by the public and entrusted with children in a public institution, in which attendance by children is mandated by law. Police have him on tape soliciting sex for pay. It's such a serious crime that if convicted for the original felony charge he could have faced life in prison.
But that felony conviction is never likely when the perpetrator is, or has been, a teacher in the public schools. Far from it. In the case of Clark, he was allowed to plead guilty to "harassment" - a misdemeanor with no real penalty. As a result of "harassing" the boy, Clark will be placed on one year of supervised probation. That means he has to show up and visit with a probation officer, once in a while, for a year. In addition, he has been ordered to relinquish his teaching certificate - but only for a year!
It seems "harassment" would involve something like teasing the child about the color of his hair, or his height, or his weight. Urging the boy to have sex, in return for cash, is far from harassment. It's the solicitation of a minor to engage in prostitution. But we wouldn't want the courts wasting time on anything like that. After all, local law enforcement just spent 17 months pursuing a man who allowed a few customers to smoke in his bar. That's the important stuff here in El Paso County, apparently.
Meanwhile, former Lewis-Palmer Middle School teacher and girls basketball coach Gregory Jackson was allowed to plead guilty Monday - to "harassment" - after facing felony charges of sexual assault on a child. Like Clark, Jackson will face no serious consequences.
A congressional study and an Associated Press survey have found in recent years that sexual assault - meaning molestation and rape - against children is rampant in public schools throughout the country. The Associated Press found that much of the sexual assault is intentionally ignored and unreported by school teachers and administrators, and offenders are often simply passed around to other schools. Few ever face serious prosecution and consequences.
"Students in America's schools are groped. They're raped. They're pursued, seduced and think they're in love," said one story in an AP series that went mostly ignored and unpublished by the AP's client newspapers, radio stations and TV news channels.
The AP investigation found more than 2,500 cases in five years in which public school educators had sexual relations with children that ranged from "bizarre to sadistic." And that number includes only the educators who were punished.
A U.S. Department of Education report, in response to a congressionally mandated survey, showed that up to 10 percent of public school children throughout the United States are sexually abused or harassed by school employees and teachers. Think the Catholic church had a problem with sexual abuse of children decades ago? It sure did, and it continues to pay to this day. But the author of the congressional study said sexual abuse in public schools is "100 times the abuse by priests," and few are paying much of a price.
"I see it regularly," Sherryll Kraizer, executive director of the Denver-based Safe Child Program, told The Gazette in February. "There are laws against failing to report, but the law is almost never enforced. Almost never."
And why should it be, really? When authorities do find out about sexual abuse, or solicitations for child prostitution, very little happens. It barely makes headlines.
Perpetrators are offered to-die-for plea deals that typically involve no prison time, and in general nobody seems to care all that much at all.
Nobody needs AP surveys or congressional studies to understand this dilemma. One need look no further than El Paso County, where two sexual predators - people paid by the public and entrusted with kids - had their wrists slapped after sexually pursuing kids.
