Like a lot of parents, I've been troubled by the number of teachers who've been arrested for having innapropriate relationships with students.
Buchtel Coach Claude Brown and Jennings Middle School teacher Randal Crane are some of the cases I worked on most recently. Then of course, we have all the national cases like Debra Lafave, the female teacher in Florida who had sex with a teen boy there and didn't even go to jail. These stories seem to be on the news every night.
But why? I mean, why????
Why are so many teachers crossing the line?
I wanted to find out ... so I asked a real teacher who went to prison for having sex with a child. I asked him why teachers do it and how they choose their victims. I was blown away by how candid he was with his answers. See the promo here.
Leaving out some of the more disturbing revelations, I've crafted a story that hopefully provides real advice for parents on how to know if your child is getting too close with a teacher. Still, with fewer than one percent of teachers being charged with this kind of stuff, there's no reason to worry our children that every teacher out there is a threat -- that part is just not true. But the number of reported cases is on the rise, and that's alarming.
My story plays Wednesday night at 11 p.m. on Channel 3. I invite your feedback .. both positive and negative. Eric
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4 comments:
Totally off subject but...
...you were right about the perception thing(as opposed to Esposito's view) on NewsNightAkron in regards to Firestone coming forward threatening to leave. My first reaction was "oh great, now every big company in Akron is gonna say me too, you did it for Goodyear - I want a brand new building too."
I looked into the story more and understand what Ed was saying, but like you said, perception is huge.
Eric,
I'm glad that you did a story on this - I'm going to certainly make a point to watch the story tomorrow night. Do you know if there's any type of regulation in the State of Ohio (or any state for that matter) in which a teacher takes a psychological examination prior to coming on board with a school in an effort to "weed out" those teachers that might be tempted to cross the line? I don't know if that would even help...I'm just trying to think of something here to protect our children!
Thanks again for covering the stories that are important (at least they are to me!)...
Laura
Eric,
You know, what other job is in the public eye like a teacher. I know that most of us choose to do this job, but I am so sick of people bashing teachers all over the media when we have a bad apple on the tree. You know, there are far more sexual predators and oriented offenders out there. We already have enough to worry about with the growing pressures to pass state mandated testing and such, could just once in a while, see some of the good schools are doing??
Something in the news you're apperantly missing and I find alarming you made a comment that Debra Lafave didn't go to jail for her crime, where've you been lately? Debra Lafave has been hauled to jail at least three times over this, the most recent incident was for a VP (if you know what that stands for) that even her judge found to be not sagnifigant enough to be cause for alarm.
But bottom line is that Debra has indeed gone to jail for her crime and that most people in Society would agree is ENOUGH.
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