The Child Sexual Abuse Cover-up in K-12 Schools:Key Terms, and the Problems Defined and Unpacked.
What is the difference between sexual harassment and sexual assault?
Before we can begin a conversation about the sexual abuse cover up underway in K-12 schools, we need to take a minute and define some terms commonly used in discussions about Title IX—specifically teasing out the differences between sexual harassment, sexual assault, and the categories used to describe each.
Sexual Harassment vs. Sexual Assault:
Sexual harassment is typically defined as a pattern of exposure to unwanted sexual advances, comments, or jokes, whereas sexual assault has been used to describe unwanted touching of sexual organs up to and including rape. Sometimes you may hear that it has to be touching under the clothes to qualify as assault, but other times not. The boundary between sexual harassment and assault can sometimes be a legal gray area—specifically threats of rape, and it is usually very difficult for victims to find a captive audience with their local law enforcement if a threat of rape is reported. There are several categories of harassment, as well as important terms for when it meets the minimum standard for a Title IX case.
Types of Sexual Harassment:
Terms like pervasive, and severe are used to describe the matters of degrees of the acts which must be present in order for them to qualify as a true a “Title IX” issue, as are terms like “hostile environment,” and “quid pro quo,” which define the categories of harassment as well. These terms are important to understand, because case law precedent has interpreted these broad terms in highly specific ways over the years, and the current administration has dialed back the new verbiage of Title IX laws which made it easier for victims to obtain justice.
The Radical Difference in K-12 vs. Higher Education:
But this entire conversation about the differentiation between the terms, “harassment” and “assault” is largely moot in K-12 education due to state child sexual abuse laws, and a term we have in K-12 schooling known as “en loco parentis,” which is basically the idea that teachers are legally required to act as any reasonable parent would to protect their students. It’s an added layer of responsibility that we have to our students which college professors do not. Understanding both of these concepts, and how they apply to school staff’s responsibility is critically absent from the national conversations around Title IX implementation efforts. And adding insult to injury, we see that due to the adult privilege in the feminist and sexual harm advocacy movement, Title IX is FAR more implemented in the collegiate setting—which is obviously very inronic given the far greater legal responsibilities that K-12 staff have to protect their students.
Why are teachers not reporting child sexual abuse happening at school to outside authorities?
Regardless of being told this, we still don’t make reports to outside authorities if we suspect child sexual abuse has occurred at school. And you might be asking yourself—Why aren’t they reporting?
Are they crazy, stupid, or indifferent?
The Role of Structural Sexism in Our Profession, and the Culture of K-12 Schools:
This part is very hard for outsiders to understand, but we will try to explain it a bit. Although we are TOLD to make these reports in no uncertain terms, we are institutionalized in such a fashion that we just DON’T, and for the most part, no one has noticed. The culture of K-12 schools insidiously indoctrinates teachers into a highly submissive, and disempowered role, and engenders a lack of agency over our own perceptions. There just are NO systems set up to honor the laws in this regard.
Group psychology is also to blame—since everyone around us is doing it this way, we then think either on a conscious or subconscious level that it MUST be the right way—even if its clearly not. It’s truly not even a case of teachers knowing what they SHOULD do, and then doing something else—it’s more of a case of them not internalizing this information in the first place. They are not bad people—they are broken people—who are subjected to gaslighting and microaggressions when they speak up about issues like these. And yet—they are the only entity in this broken and oppressive system with tenure, making them the only ones without a conflict of interest. But due to the structural sexism in K-12 teaching, we are not included in the leadership whatsoever of our own profession. So even with tenure, they still don’t see it. Which is why School Staff Against Sexual Violence exists in the first place. We were the weirdos who noticed, and never gave up trying to fight this.
In Home vs. Out-of-Home Child Abuse Investigations:
Indeed, school staff have all been institutionalized to minimize all child abuse—everywhere, but the abuse at school most of all. In practice what happens is that if we suspect child abuse in the home, we make a report directly to CPS. But, abuse at school gets handled very, very differently. If you ask teachers, they’ll tell you that they report school-based sexual abuse to their administrators, and that is all.
The administrators will then conduct unlawful investigations themselves, which are not trauma informed, and are rushed and very veiled from the public—including the involved parties and their parents (who are sometimes not notified). They are handled like any other disciplinary issue, and often involve bringing both the victim and the perpetrator into the same room, to give their statements. Only after they have conducted their “investigation,” do they call law enforcement, and only if THEY think it warrants their attention. And to be clear—they mostly don’t think it does. We have been made of aware of many occasions where child molestation or rape occurred on campuses, and administrators did not make those reports. They ALSO typically conduct all Title IX investigations too, and then only refer the ones that THEY believe meet the minimum threshold to their Title IX Coordinator, who is usually someone hidden away at district office—existing in name only, that is not known to the larger community, and who has another full time job, with a clear conflict of interest.
Title IX vs. Child Sexual Abuse at School:
It can be hard to tease out the difference between Title IX, and child sexual abuse mandated reporting, so an important way to think about it like this: Title IX covers ALL sexual harm at school. It is the job of a Title IX Coordinator to decide if it meets the minimum standard of pervasive/severe, but all school staff are supposed to be reporting each and every instance directly to them. If they believe it meets that threshold, then they will instigate the due process procedures. If they ALSO think it meets the minimum threshold for child sexual abuse, then they must ALSO report it to law enforcement.
But teachers who suspect sexual harm at school must satisfy BOTH of these reporting requirements—separately. Not even a Title IX coordinator is allowed to investigate child sexual abuse for the purposes of a preliminary criminal investigation. The tricky part here is that sexual abuse is ALSO a Title IX matter too, so what SHOULD be happening when there is an instance of child sexual abuse at school, is the Title IX coordinator and local law enforcement must work very closely together to ensure that both bodies are conducting a lawful investigation, following due their respective due processes, and offering all of the supporting services required.
Law Enforcement Failures:
But when we’ve attempted to make these reports, what we have found is chilling—site based administrators, who have huge conflicts of interest, are not trained to be Title IX investigators or decision makers, much less trained to conduct preliminary criminal investigations, are in fact doing so—and only reporting up the chain if THEY think they should. The effect that this has on our school sites, is that the lionshare of both Title IX cases and instances of child sexual abuse at school are never documented at all.
While trying to report to local law enforcement, members of our organization spread out in numerous locations have point blank been told the following:
Child sexual abuse is not occurring if both the victim and the perpetrator are children, and the only way they will investigate is if the perpetrator is over 18
Staff should make their reports to site based administrators who will then conduct their own preliminary investigation and refer it to law enforcement only if “necessary.”
Threats of rape are not child abuse—there must be physical conduct for a crime to have been committed.
Law Enforcement refused to take our reports
The Difference Between Sexual Harassment of Adults, and Sexual Harassment of Children:
In regards to child sexual abuse laws (another factor absent from consideration in the collegiate seeting) here is the deal—most of what we would consider to be mere harassment in the adult world, is actually child sexual abuse if the victim is under the age of 18. But the extent to which people inside of K-12 schooling have been institutionalized on this subject is staggering.
The Bizarre Lack of Reporting Explained:
For example, as school staff, we receive our mandated child abuse reporting training each year. Ask any teacher—we are told, in no uncertain terms, that if we suspect child abuse is happening in the home, we must report, and the system we interface with is our local county child welfare office. This is sometimes termed, “Child Protective Services” or “Department of Child and Family Services.” When we call them, they take our reports immediately, and make their own determinations about how to proceed—sometimes responding immediately, other times days later—but they are the entity entrusted to investigate the allegation. CPS is NOT however the investigative body which governs schools. If the abuse happens there, you must report it to law enforcement. Below are the extremely clear non-negotiables in the “Keenan Safe Schools” (the online training many teachers must complete each school year) mandated child abuse reporting training which govern us:
We must report abuse if we suspect—and the legal term for the minimum standard is “reasonable suspicion.” We do not need proof.
We are taught that the only people we can make our report to is a county child welfare worker, law enforcement, or a county designee.
As a mandated reporter none of these entities can refuse to take your report.
Telling our principals or other supervisors does not qualify as reporting abuse.
The only people able to conduct an investigation of child sexual abuse are the same entities that take our reports.
It does not matter if the suspected perpetrator is an adult or under the age of 18.
It doesn't matter where the abuse occurred—at school or in the home, it must be reported.
So how much sexual harassment or abuse is happening in K-12 schools?
This is a very hard question to answer. Most of the instances are not getting reported at all, and no one is holding schools accountable for this. Despite declarations about Title IX on some state office of education websites, they do not oversee any of their implementation plans, or request any documentation that schools have complied in any way. Students are not made aware of their rights, are not exposed to global messaging about sexual harm, and those that do report are called into the principal’s office, with their abusers in the room, and are subjected to traumatic interviews, and not offered support. This results in many students not reporting their abuse at all. Schools are also not prompted to survey their students about the presence of sexual harm on their campuses either. So you can’t just ask K-12 folks what this number is—because they do not have it.
The scholarly literature on K-12 sexual harm is scant to say the least, and what is available does not speak at all to the child sexual abuse component at all, likely because it was not created by or for K-12 scholars, but instead by scholars in the collegiate setting, who do not have to contend with this consideration. There is however, a highly credible resource published by the American Association of University Women, which suggests that half of all students are sexually harassed during their time in K-12 schools. If you were to request the Title IX public records of any school district however (and you could—they are public records), you might find only a small handful of cases spanning over years of time.
The cover up going on inside of K-12 schooling is the biggest sexual harm scandal story ever—
even though it is easy to put it all together, no one has noticed or cared.
—until now that is.
