Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, February 7, 1992 TAG: 9202070227
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NEAL THOMPSON EDUCATION WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BILLS ADDRESS TEACHER CHILD-ABUSE PROBES
A few years ago, a fourth-grade teacher in Western Virginia was trying to organize disoriented pupils milling aimlessly outside school after a fire drill.As she tried to line them up, the teacher put her hands on the shoulders of about six of the kids to turn them in the right direction.
Three days later, the teacher learned she was being investigated for child abuse.
Child protective services workers from the Department of Social Services didn't find proof of anything, but still ruled there was "reason to suspect" the teacher had abused the children. When the teacher appealed the ruling, it was overturned.
Overturned - but not forgotten.
This year - three years later - rumors started up again: Teacher so-and-so is a child abuser.
"And she said the wound was as fresh this year as it was the day they accused her . . . and it will never go away," Doris Boitnott said.
Boitnott represents teachers in Covington, Roanoke County and Alleghany-Highlands for the Virginia Education Association. The VEA wants to change how teachers accused of physical or emotional child abuse are investigated.
Now, investigators in social services rule that such accusations either are founded or unfounded, or that there is "reason to suspect" they are founded. Teachers say the third finding is a nebulous one, but one that stays on teachers' records and can jeopardize their job and tarnish their reputation.
"It is a demoralizing, traumatic experience," Boitnott said.
Two bills scheduled for a vote in the House of Delegates today could change that.
One would make prior "reason-to-suspect" findings on a teacher's record private, so that they would have no effect on any future investigations.
The second - and the one more important to teachers - would take investigations out of social services' hands and allow school divisions to conduct their own investigations, along with the local commonwealth's attorney.
In a House voice vote Thursday, the first bill failed but the second passed. If that holds up today, the second bill goes to a Senate committee and then on for a full Senate vote. If approved in both houses, the new procedure would go into effect July 1.
Not a moment too soon, Boitnott says.
"We're at a point where, if you pat a child on the back to say, `Good work,' then that pat can be interpreted as a sexual advance," she said. "What they think is abusive is our way of maintaining control.
"What we're asking for . . . is serious stuff. We're asking to be investigated by the commonwealth's attorney. We're willing to take our chances."
Some social services workers say allowing school districts to investigate their own workers creates the potential for bias.
"When you're that close to a situation, there's always a risk that you've already created your own biased opinion about what happened," said Gary Thompson, supervisor of family and children services for the Roanoke County Department of Social Services.
"I certainly can't see us investigating complaints against our workers here. . . . That certainly does seem self-serving to me."
Judy Brown, supervisor of Roanoke's child protective services, said that if schools were allowed to conduct their own investigations, it would open the gate for similar requests from other organizations that deal with children: day care and mental institutions, for example
"They'd have some of the same arguments," Brown said.
Brown said social services isn't looking to take teachers' jobs or hurt their reputations; they're instead protecting children. And the current system is the best way to do that, he contends.
Opponents of that system call it unconstitutional.
Teachers are denied due process in a system that allows them to be accused and investigated without ever being informed of the identity of their accuser or the specifics of the allegation, said Barbara Bryan, with the Roanoke-based Virginians Organized for Constitutionally Applied Laws, or VOCAL. Her organization helps those who are falsely accused in child-protection matters.
The public thinks that when you are accused, you get safeguards. Bryan said that's not true: "The murderers get the safeguards. . . . The teachers don't have any."
"The teachers are absolutely correct in rising up and saying: enough," she said.
Gary Waldo, who represents teachers in Roanoke and surrounding counties for the VEA, said the group is "not trying to keep teachers who are abusers from being prosecuted."
It's trying to keep teachers who aren't abusers from being unfairly labeled.
"It's almost like you have to prove yourself innocent," he said. "You're guilty until proven innocent, and that's not the way it's supposed to be."
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