School Safety Net Fails to Bar Molesters

SOCIAL CIRCLE, Ga. — Bill Walsh taught in Gilmer County, Ga., until he was accused of molesting boys.

But there was no indictment, so Walsh moved on to Oconee County, where he worked as a substitute teacher. There, three boys accused him of touching them on the buttocks and crotch.

But no one could prove it, and nobody reported it to the state, and Walsh moved on to Social Circle Elementary School. It was his third school in two years, and it was the place his teaching career ended.

This summer, Walsh was sentenced to 40 years in prison, convicted of sexually fondling his students at Social Circle.

“You’ll never again be entrusted with our youth,” Judge Marvin Sorrells told him as victims’ parents glared at the handcuffed teacher.

But why had it taken so long for justice to prevail? Why had children in three different Georgia schools been subjected to Walsh before he was stopped?

And is this sort of thing happening at schools nationwide?

The fact is, the safety net that protects American schoolchildren has been strengthened, with tougher teacher background screening, fingerprinting mandates and a new Internet-based network to catch decertified teachers who are trying to move from state to state.

But bad apples continue to show up at teachers’ desks. Why?

Holes remain in the safety net, Associated Press found in an examination of teacher screening, hiring and discipline practices across the nation.

Criminal convictions don’t necessarily bar teachers from the classroom, even for assault, drug dealing and, in rare cases, sexual misconduct with students.

A Minnesota middle school teacher, John S. Kinzler, was accused by several teenage students of improperly touching them. “It was not like a ‘good job’ pat,” one girl told police.

A student aide to Florida high school teacher James R. Stein made a similar complaint, saying that he had touched and kissed her despite her protests.

Prosecutors brought criminal charges. Kinzler pleaded guilty to three counts of misdemeanor criminal sexual conduct. Stein pleaded no contest to a battery charge. Both were fined, ordered to get counseling and placed on probation.

Then both returned to the classroom.

Kinzler had tenure, his superintendent said. A misdemeanor is not just cause to break a contract, even misdemeanor sexual conduct with a student. State education officials agreed, and Minnesota’s system is not unique. Kinzler declined to comment.

In an interview, Stein said he had “worked long and hard” to comply with all school and court requirements. “I did everything they asked me to do,” he said.

Kids are at risk for other reasons. About a dozen states do not mandate criminal background investigations for new teachers statewide. In 15 states, fingerprint checks are not required, even though this is considered the most effective screening. Some districts in these states do their own screening.

In some places, complained National School Safety Center Director Ronald Stephens, “there are more requirements to screen someone who’s brushing down horses at the racetracks than someone who’s working with our children in the schools.”

Even in states with tough background checks, an uncertain number of convicts teach. A blanket disqualification of anyone with a criminal record is considered unfair; some convicted teachers keep their jobs conditionally after disciplinary hearings. But in other cases, oversight officials are unaware.

Associated Press computer matches turned up Texas teachers with rap sheets from six of 11 states checked. Like several states, Texas routinely checks only for criminal activity committed within its borders.

Arguments against criminal background screening can be summed up this way: cost, cumbersomeness and the Constitution.

“Freedom-loving people should be concerned about how much liberty they’re willing to relinquish for the good of the community,” said Scott Crichton of the American Civil Liberties Union of Montana, where a teacher background check bill was rejected this year.

Targeting teachers is simply unfair, others say.

“It was insulting . . . to ask a teacher who’d been teaching 25 or 30 years, who’d been a pillar of her community, to go down and get fingerprinted,” said Corrie Haanschoten of the Alabama Education Assn. The union successfully lobbied to exempt current teachers from a new fingerprinting requirement; it covers new school employees.

But Rick Wilson of Washington state’s teacher-screening agency defended tough mandates there, which he said stop felon-applicants every week: “If you’re preventing some very bad people from going in . . . how much is it worth even if you save one or two or three children?”

Kids are at risk because investigative staffs have not been beefed up to keep pace with the widening safety net.

As his annual caseload doubled to about 800 investigations, James Carter, who heads Georgia’s teacher investigative agency, said only one employee had been added, bringing his staff to eight.

His agency’s case file of a teacher whose record shows a felony drug prescription forgery conviction and two DUIs was never resolved with a recommendation of discipline or dismissal; when checked by AP, the last entry was from 1994. A staff member acknowledged losing track of it.

“This is another result of having too many cases,” Carter said. “And it is frustrating.”

In Texas, a staff of six is working through 1,200 teacher-misconduct cases, including 17 filed at least five years ago.

California officials have complained about delays of three years in the state’s processing of teachers’ appeals of disciplinary action, which could lead to cases being dismissed for lack of timely consideration.

These shortcomings are the residue of a system that often protected teachers while turning a blind eye to children’s suffering.

“Cover-up and revolving door: that has been the tradition,” said Douglas Bates, a lawyer and education official who has long worked to tighten teacher screening and administrator responsibility laws.

Was this revolving door evident in the story of William F. Walsh and his odyssey through three Georgia schools?

Dist. Atty. Alan Cook, who won convictions against the 50-year-old Walsh, said, “I think that all professions, not just the teaching profession, tend to give their own the benefit of the doubt. And in this case, the public interest wasn’t served.”

“This man stole these children’s innocence,” said the mother of one victim in Social Circle. Her son turned moody and lethargic, she said. At one point he begged, “Mom, please home-school me.”

“My feeling is the ball was dropped--horribly,” she said.

Two years before his Social Circle conviction, back in May 1995, Walsh was charged by police with two counts of sexual battery at Ellijay Primary School in Gilmer County, an hour and a half away in the Appalachian foothills.

There, too, his accusers were young male students. Authorities were strangely discomfited by photos of local boys, some images reportedly transferred to computer disks, though none was described as pornographic.

The local grand jury declined to indict.

Walsh left the mountain town’s school system.

Noting the grand jury’s decision, the state Professional Practices Commission closed its inquiry too.

The teacher moved to Oconee County Intermediate School, in a rural area about half an hour from Social Circle. There, in 1996, he worked as a substitute.

No one contacted Walsh’s previous employers in Gilmer County. And local policy--since changed--did not require substitutes to have a police background check.

In May 1996, three boys in Walsh’s class complained that he had inappropriately touched them on the buttocks or crotch.

In the lunchroom, they told teacher Becky Arnold. “I believed them,” she told police later, “because they were very upset, were serious, and gave exact details.”

Besides, she remembered watching as Walsh took rolls and rolls of photographs during field-day activities.

“He was taking pictures of little boys all over the place,” she recalls telling the principal. “It made me uncomfortable.”

The boys refused to return to Walsh’s class, so Assistant Principal Charles Cunningham placed them in another teacher’s room for the rest of the day. He spoke with Walsh, who denied wrongdoing, and with other kids, including a girl who “somewhat confirmed the allegations.”

The assistant principal concluded that Walsh had only put his arm around the boys, who “misinterpreted the actions of someone being nurturing,” a district summary of the case said.

In a police report, Principal Bill Brooks recalled that Cunningham “said that he had talked with all of the children and their parents and that they were all ‘OK.’ ”

Walsh was allowed to return as a substitute the next day. (Only later, after his discussions of evolution caused controversy among the students, did administrators decide not to call him back to teach.)

No one in the state child welfare office was contacted; the Professional Practices Commission was not informed.

So Walsh went on to Social Circle.

“He was the best candidate” for a job teaching gifted students, said the superintendent there, Robert Waller. He was certified in areas that other applicants were not and was impressive during an interview.

That outweighed other considerations, including Walsh’s 1995 molestation arrest.

“Yeah, we were aware of that,” Waller said. “When we called up there and checked, they said the charge was trumped up and there was nothing to it. . . . We relied on Gilmer County to tell the truth, and the PPC.”

In time, however, there was more information about Walsh.

Brooks, his former principal, had become an administrator in Social Circle. When he saw Walsh’s name on the teacher roster, he related the May 1996 touching incident in Oconee County, and advised that “we needed to keep an eye on Walsh by checking on his classroom frequently,” according to a police report.

Walsh’s classroom, like a few others, had a solid door; officials made plans to replace these with windowed doors, said Jeff Welch, Social Circle’s assistant superintendent.

But that didn’t happen immediately, and Walsh was not removed from his fourth-grade classroom.

Firing a teacher is difficult under state fair-dismissal rules, the assistant superintendent said. “You can do a transfer--if there’s not a loss in perceived prestige, pay or position,” he explained. No appropriate job was available.

“You can debate whether we did enough,” he said.

Walsh was arrested last fall after students complained.

Prosecutors contended that the teacher had groped the buttocks or crotch of male students. There was testimony about the thousands of photos he took, mostly boys, many his students, some in swimsuits at meets.

Detectives seized Walsh’s home computer, made a “forensic copy” of its hard drive, and presented the results: photographs pulled from the Internet of males exposing their genitals and performing sex acts. Some were estimated to be as young as 13.

Walsh continues to deny he did anything wrong. His lawyer is appealing. He awaits a second trial on molestation charges in Oconee County--police there only learned about the allegations after he was arrested in Social Circle.

Assistant Supt. Welch is proud of how Social Circle responded to the accusations against Walsh: “As soon as we had a report, we took it extremely seriously. He was out of the school system in less than seven days.”

And on the day Walsh resigned, prosecutor Cook said, workmen replaced his classroom’s solid door. Now it has a window.

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How This Story Was Done

There is no easy way to investigate the evolving safety net for the nation’s schoolchildren.

Associated Press overlaid computer lists of teachers in eight states with criminal data obtained from 13, confirmed hundreds of matches, consulted court and school records, and interviewed education authorities, legal experts and teachers themselves.