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Abuse accusations don’t keep teachers from classrooms
By The Associated Press
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Time and again in their seven-month investigation, Associated Press reporters discovered cases in which educators accused of sexual misconduct continued to teach. A sampling of such cases follows:

PHOENIX (AP) — By the time Nicole was in her 30s, she no longer thought about what happened to her in the third grade.

Her teacher, Mr. Welsh, had resigned, and school administrators promised he would never teach again. Over the years, Nicole forgot his face, how he made her feel, what he did.

According to court documents, Welsh molested Nicole between 1980 and 1981 while instructing other third graders in class. He abused her as she tried to complete a standardized test, during reading time, and in the dark as everyone else watched a movie. He also molested one of her classmates.

But David Edgar Welsh, a popular teacher who’d described himself to parents as “a person who likes to touch and feel and hug,” couldn’t stay away from the classroom.

Fifteen years after the Arizona school system showed him the door, he was working in another Arizona elementary school. And this time, police were investigating allegations that he’d molested at least one of his students, a third-grader, just like he’d abused Nicole during the 1980s.

“How could this happen?” Nicole, now 35, asked recently as she sifted through court documents that detailed Welsh’s molestation charges. She did not want her last name used because of what happened to her.

Ben Furlong was superintendent of the Kyrene School District, which includes prosperous suburbs southeast of Phoenix, when Nicole’s parents sounded the alarm about Welsh. As the district’s top officer, Furlong learned that students had accused Welsh of molesting them. He knew that parents were furious.

But after asking Welsh to quit, Furlong simply allowed Welsh to resign — a practice that he said was standard at the time.

He didn’t contact police. He didn’t warn state child protection authorities.

Furlong, who retired in 1987, said he regrets how he handled the case.

“Anytime an adult who has power uses that power to abuse a child, it is certainly a serious transgression,” he said. “Through time, we learn how to handle these things and sometimes in the process some people get hurt and that’s very unfortunate and I’m very sorry about that.”

In 2003, Welsh pleaded guilty to child molestation, as well as attempted sexual exploitation of a minor and attempted child molestation. The last two stemmed from his actions toward Nicole and a classmate, 22 years before.

The judge sentenced him to 19 years in prison, a heavier sentence than expected, though less than the maximum of 24 years.

Welsh died of natural causes 19 months later at a state prison.

— By Associated Press Writer Chris Kahn, Phoenix

———


PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (AP) — Hector Ramirez Almenas appeared to be an impressive candidate when he applied to teach in this quiet town on Florida’s Atlantic Coast.

He had glowing recommendations and years of experience as a Spanish teacher and coach.

What the administrators who hired him didn’t know was that he’d been accused of sexual misconduct at schools in two other states. Though never convicted of a crime, he was nudged out of one job in Oklahoma and, four years later, surrendered his teaching license in Georgia without admitting guilt.

But Ramirez never told school officials in Florida — and in some cases, neither did his previous employers.

The first accusations surfaced in 1999 in Lawton, Okla., where Ramirez worked as a high school teacher and a department chairman.

Officials say a 16-year-old student complained to Principal Cynthia Walker that Ramirez kissed her and made unwanted comments about her body. The girl said Ramirez implied that her grade depended on how much she liked him.

Walker wrote Ramirez a memo, telling him she’d found “probable cause” to support the girl’s claims. The girl’s parents did not want to pursue criminal charges, however, so he was urged to resign, a school attorney said.

Ramirez claims his resignation was over disciplinary problems he’d had with a male student. “I am an innocent man,” he says.

He moved with his family to Georgia and got another high school teaching job. Walker, his former principal, gave him a good recommendation — and never mentioned the sexual misconduct accusations.

“Students and parents did love him. There was just the one student who made the allegation of the inappropriate relationship,” Walker says.

In Mount Vernon, Ga., yet another student made allegations.

Now 23 and married with two children, she remembers Ramirez telling her she was smart, pretty and mature for her age — says he regularly telephoned her, sent notes and electronic greeting cards.

“He would tell me he loved me,” said the woman, who asked not to be named because of what she endured.

In 2001, she told her superintendent that she and Ramirez had had sex twice. He resigned and was charged with sexual assault, though the charges were dropped when his 2003 trial ended in a hung jury.

Ramirez headed south to Florida and applied for a teaching license there, even though he surrendered his Georgia license that same year.

While officials in Oklahoma say they did not give him their endorsement this time, he got the job in Port St. Lucie — though authorities there eventually became aware of his past and fired him.

Ramirez, who now works in social services and still lives in Florida, no longer has a teaching license in the three states where he taught.

He remains adamant that he was unfairly targeted. “There is always two stories for everything,” he says.

— By Associated Press Writers Lisa Orkin Emmanuel, Miami; Dorie Turner, Atlanta; and Sean Murphy, Oklahoma City, Okla.

———


LURAY, Mo. (AP) — An anonymous phone call finally ended Greg Crowley’s 20-year teaching career.

Along the way, he’d been accused of touching his female basketball players inappropriately, of looking down their shirts and up their shorts. He also punched a former student and assaulted the grandfather of a player at a basketball game.

For Crowley, state personnel laws intended to protect an employee’s privacy provided a cover that allowed him to hop from one small, rural school district to the next, without any warning to his new bosses about his past problems. He held eight jobs in all.

But then came the phone call that raised questions about his sexual relationship with a high school girl in a town where he’d taught years earlier and 300 miles away. Those questions led to others, revealing how he had quietly resigned from another school after allegations of sexual misconduct.

“He got in trouble in every cotton-picking school he was employed at, and no one said anything,” said Alice St. Clair, a school nurse and secretary in Luray, where Crowley held his last job. He was the elementary school principal in this town in the state’s northeastern corner, near Iowa and Illinois. “They wanted it to go away. The schools didn’t want a lawsuit.”

In 2000, Crowley resigned from the Kingston school district following sexual harassment and misconduct complaints from at least a dozen students. Five pages of complaints cite “sexual or inappropriate behavior” and “immoral conduct.”

But rather than report him to the state, the district accepted his resignation and paid him a severance worth more than $16,000. Officials agreed not to tell future employers the real reason why Crowley left.

State law requires local districts to report certain severe offenses, including child abuse, to authorities, said state attorney Kris Morrow. For lesser misconduct, districts have more discretion.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Crowley accepted no blame. He said the harassment charges came from vindictive female athletes angry after he kicked them off the team. His fights were self-defense, he said.

And the sexual relationship with a high school student? Crowley, now 45, said the girl had turned 18 — though she told police and state investigators that it began when she was either 16 or 17.

“I feel like I got the shaft,” he said. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Crowley, once certified to teach physical education and coach, is now selling cars in Columbia. He says he voluntarily surrendered his license because he was tired of fighting the allegations. State records say his license was revoked.

— By Associated Press Writer Alan Scher Zagier, Columbia, Mo.

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Reader comments on this story - 7 total

Note: All views and opinions expressed in reader comments are solely those of the individual submitting the comment, and not those of the Pantagraph or its staff.

To: . . . Harbor Bad Seeds wrote on Oct 23, 2007 5:11 PM:

" If a teacher is accused of a crime, there's not much that the union can do for that because a criminal act most certainly would violate any contract the union has with the school board. A teacher's union works the same way as the UAW, IBEW, AFL-CIO, Teamsters, AFSCME, etc. if the employer or superior (principal) do something to violate the union contract, the employee can file a grievance and it can be worked out that way with the union providing legal assistance to the member. If it is something that the employee does to violate the law (and contract) the union really isn't involved too much. "

harsh penalties wrote on Oct 23, 2007 5:05 PM:

" teachers that sexually abuse their students should be executed! in the second part of the story the teacher said there are always two parts to every story, yea, the truth and the lie! "

narrow minded teachers wrote on Oct 23, 2007 4:35 PM:

" Teacher-your narrow and simplistic view of how it works highlights the fact that you just do not know what you are talking about. The process is dauntingly long and difficult. The school and school administrators end up being the ones on trial. Generally, in broad terms the teacher will accuse the administrator of conducting a personal vendetta when in fact the teacher is incompetent. Yes, the unions end up having to protect the worst of the field, because it is never their fault. I have been through the process from the administrative side, it is unbelieveable. I do not believe in the business model for education, but teachers should be at will employees not tenured. "

sounds like an elementary wrote on Oct 23, 2007 2:14 PM:

" school on the west side of bloomington that shall remain nameless, that refuses to report suspected abuse because it "might ruin the relationships they have worked to build with parents." "

teacher wrote on Oct 23, 2007 7:15 AM:

" You are soooo short on the facts!!! No teacher is protected by union, tenure laws or any other laws if they are identified as involved in any kind of criminal behavior. The reason "bad" teachers remain in the classrooms is because administrators do not take the required actions to have them dismissed. Sometimes this is because they are oblivious to the signs. Other times they are not present in the classrooms enough. Of course tenure laws have legal proceedures to remove a teacher. But if every allegation of sexual abuse is taken as serious and the districts don't sweep it under the rug, then unions DO NOT SHELTER THE OFFENDERS! This is clearly set forth in local, state and national association bylaws. "

it's not the unions wrote on Oct 23, 2007 6:14 AM:

" The teacher's unions don't protect slimeballs. The majority of the errors in these cases were made by superintendents in their continued recommendation of these people to new jobs. Nothing to do with unions; it has more to do with with not wanting to pursue allegations, open up investigations, and holding people accountable. Unions are supposed to insure due process... most of the time they do. Like anything else, to place the blame on one entity is simply not accurate. "

teachers union harbor the bad seeds wrote on Oct 22, 2007 5:45 PM:

" that is the only thing that keeps these teachers in the classroom is fear of reprisal on the part of the teachers unions. I always knew unions were full of criminals but it used to be just the business agents and officers. Now it seems with the teachers union that many criminals are actual card carrying members. "
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