Teachers and Sex

USA Today recently reported in a headline "Thousands of Teachers Cited for Sex Misconduct". They claim that in a seven month study of schools throughout the United States they uncovered over 2,500 cases of sexual misconduct by teachers. In every case, a teacher molesting a student is a terrible travesty and safeguards should be implemented to prevent the occurrence of any such activity, but is this widespread throughout our nation?

The headline is obviously designed to capture the reader's attention and they go on to cite some egregious examples that will no doubt infuriate readers and more than likely result in local school districts implementing policies that will insure separation of students from teachers.

Let's look at the numbers that USA Today reported to get an idea of the extent of this problem. They reported that they found 2,570 examples of teacher sexual misconduct that spanned a period of five years and that young people were the victim in 1,801 of those cases. In other words, in 769 cases of sexual misconduct, however that is defined, adults were the victims. Further they state that of the 1,801 involving young people, 80% were students. So in actuality they uncovered 1441 cases of sexual misconduct by teachers upon students over a period of 5 years.

USA Today did not report the number of cases by year so it is difficult to determine if there is a trend, but if one was to divide the 1441 cases by the 5 years which constituted the period of their analysis it would be equal to a little over 288 cases per year of sexual misconduct by teachers upon students. One case per year would be unacceptable for America's children.

They also reported that there were about 3 million teachers in the United States. So for every 3 million teachers, there are a reported 288 sexual misconduct cases involving students. In other words USA Today has reported that for every 10,000 teachers there is one sexual misconduct case.

Again, even one student being sexually victimized by a teacher is awful and we as protectors of our children need to remain vigilant. Drugs, bullying, school bus accidents and a host of other potential dangers exist that might injure our children.

USA Today spent seven months investigating this story and something needs to be written about the results. They could have reported that while one evil teacher in 10,000 is not good, there are many other dangers that are children are exposed too or they could have stated that the chance of a child being molested in school is less than 2 per 100,000 children.

Conclusion: USA Today sensationalized a subject that is emotional and evokes strong reaction from the public and in actuality is a concern that demands vigilance, but is not out of control. Teachers sexually molesting our children is not rampant. They have sought to create a perception of rampant sexual molestation by teachers which simply does occur according to their own statistics.

Here are a few other concerns for purposes of perspective which occurred over the 5 year period of the USA Today analysis of teacher sexual molestation of children.

Approximately 20,000 children were injured by fireworks.

As many as 8,000 children died from child abuse.

Almost 60,000 children died during that period from unintentional injuries at home.

Almost 5,000 children died due to neglect or the actions of their parents.