JUNE 25, 2010 -- For the past two and half years, the state legislature has struggled with how far it needed to go to protect older public school students from the sexual advances of teachers. 
Now starts a new era. Just last night, Gov. Mark Sanford signed into law a hard-fought bill that creates a felony of criminal sexual conduct for a teacher or supervisory adult engaged in inappropriate behavior with a 16- to -18-year-old student The new felony is punishable by up to 5 years in jail. Acts involving kids under the age of 16 were already covered by existing state felony laws.
The new bill will give more teeth to efforts led by state Superintendent of Education Jim Rex to curb inappropriate contact and relations between educators and students.
Since Rex took office nearly four years ago, more than 60 public school personnel have been fired, suspended, or had their teacher certification suspended or revoked for sexually-related acts with or aimed at students.
The offenses ranged from teachers sharing inappropriate nude photos of themselves with their impressionable charges to full contact sexual activity. More.
Crossing the line
According to Rex’s staff, of the 100 disciplinary cases that came before the state Board of Education in the 2008-09 year, 11 involved inappropriate relations or actions between students and adults in a supervisory role. Of those 11, four resulted in suspension and seven in full revocations of jobs and certifications.
“I hate it any time any story splashes across the news about a teacher [doing something like this],” said Mark Mitchell, an education professor at Winthrop University and former public school administrator in Missouri with over three decades of experience. “It gives all of us, and all of our profession, a black eye and [emboldens] enemies of public education.”
While Mitchell bemoans the number of teachers straying as being too high, Anne Lee, president of child abuse awareness organization Darkness To Light, complained that the 60 teachers caught over four years may be far too small in a state that has about 700,000 public school students and 54,000 teachers and administrators.
Increased awareness
“My gut tells me that 60 is not inordinately high, compared to other states,” said Lee, who added that at some level, she thinks there is a greater propensity for abuse than has been uncovered. “Face it. We live in an environment fraught with sexual abuse.”
Lee likened the increased awareness of sexual abuse to the increase of students enrolled in special education programs. As schools have become more sophisticated in testing and detecting struggling students, she noted, administrators and other teachers have gotten better at spotting signs that a teacher may have crossed the line with one of his or her charges.
“It doesn’t take ‘people’ to stop what happened to me. It only takes a person who sees the red flags,” said Guerry Glover, a middle-aged Charleston man who was molested by a teacher over a period of several years while attending a private school in his hometown.
Glover led the charge as an adult to get that teacher, who had hopscotched between several schools, removed from the classroom. The teacher later was arrested in his mid-60s and died in prison.
Training has impact
Glover appears in the teacher training film that Darkness To Light produced as part of its Stewards of Children program. Today, he says he is glad to hear from others taking the online training across the nation that his message positively impacted them.
“In the end, knowledge is king because everyone who takes the training takes that knowledge with them when they leave school and go back to their communities, their youth organizations, their churches," said Glover.
That messaged resonated in South Carolina too. Rex, alarmed by the reports within his own state, began searching for a way to reach out to schools and get everyone aware of the warning signs.
In that search, Rex discovered Stewards of Children in his own backyard. The state Department of Education has since partnered with Darkness To Light for the past two years. The awareness organization tailored its program for the state’s educator needs and has helped spread the word.
Lots of educators trained in volunteer program
In the last two years, close to half of all the K-12 public teachers across the state have taken the training, according to state educators. The Dorchester II school district, for example, recently went whole-hog and had every supervisory employee – from teachers and coaches to bus drivers and cafeteria workers – take the training.
Critics point out that Rex has not made the program mandatory -- that school districts have the ability to opt out, as a handful have, according to his staffers.
Rex said the main reason he didn’t make the training mandatory was money – that he didn’t have any to cover the cost. Some corporate sponsors, such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina, have made significant cash donations, but until the state’s budget picture is rosier, Rex, or his successor in six months, will likely be unable to do so.
More work to be done
Rex said the next battlefield will be getting the training to teachers before they become teachers. As such, he said he would like to see colleges and universities make child sexual abuse awareness training part of education department curriculum.
That’s already been done at Winthrop, where Mitchell not only advocates the training, but is a Stewards of Children facilitator.
“We need to get [future teachers] to understand that as they make the transition from student to young adult to adult working with impressionable kids, and kids who think they are older than they really are, there are certain pitfalls about relationships with students,” said Mitchell.
“Every university, I believe, is obligated to tell our [future teachers] the way things are,” he said.
Crystal ball: If Anne Lee is right, then increased awareness and increased knowledge may lead to increased reported incidents of abuse. But, that doesn’t necessarily mean the problem would be getting worse, especially if South Carolina is truly on the forefront of battling this rogue affliction.