I just found out my 5th grade teacher is a convicted child molester

I worked with a preps writer who was fired from a previous job for asking a 16-year-old out.

I remember a different guy at a swim meet when I was straight out of school walking up to me and saying, "Check out the tits on Lane 4."

It just fucking disgusted me. Both of these guys in question were in their mid 30s, not that it would have been OK from someone who was 22.

 

I know a guy who's in the clink for child molestation. I believe my mom used to work with this guy's parents. He's the youngest of three kids. When I heard that I flashed back to one vivid memory I had. There were a bunch of people over at this guys house... I think it was a Christmas party or something.

There was a group of 8-10 kids upstairs playing video games, including the guy currently in jail. Long story short, I was basically propositioned by someone in the group... but not that guy. I knew enough to say no, and I never told my parents about it because I didn't quite know what the hell to say.

I hadn't thought about that in years, but it's the first thought I had when I heard he was sent up.

 

I think a lot of people have a similar story. One where nothing happened, but it could have...

That itself can be scary...

 

Watch more South Park.

 

I have been on the administrative side of trying to figure out if an adult was molesting a child. It's not fun at all, and it's even worse when the kid's parents say the kid has done this before and the adult is not at fault.

A small percentage of people get into education and coaching for the wrong reasons. It's just a fact of life.

The best thing to do is be sure you see red flags coming from the sketchy teacher.

1. Teachers do not go one-on-one with students with the door closed.
2. Teachers should never friend your kid on facebook.
3. Your kid should not get phone calls from the teacher that are not school related.

I know at the high school level, this might happen more, but at the middle and elementary level, it should not be happening.

 

How sad. You have to "date" 16-year-olds because college freshmen are already too wise for your shit.

 

My dad's cousin, a retired priest, just made the news again -- papers and TV -- as more people came forward to say he abused them. He has admitted to it in the past. Among his victims? Family members, including a younger cousin who later took his own life.

The only time I really saw him as a kid was at reunions. But there's a picture that still haunts my mom. Me, at 5, sitting on the priest's lap, his arms around my waist, big creepy-in-retrospect grin plastered on his face. Many years ago the priest's brother, racked with guilt at what his sibling had done, tried tracking down many of the victims, including a foster child they had who had been abused by the priest. He called several of us to see if we had been victimized.

I was never abused. I told him that but he was insistent that something must have happened and wondered if some depression issues I'd had in the past were related. They weren't.

Even when I was a kid, priests didn't have the infallibility they possessed with previous generations. My grandpa used to say that if he had been abused as a kid by a priest and told his parents, they would have whipped my grandpa. Being that young, I certainly didn't think the priest was a molester but there was just something off about him, a sentiment shared by the cousins of similar age. I do remember going to a baseball game with him and my folks when I was about 10 and the priest telling my parents how he wanted me to come stay with him in the residence for a week. I was like, eh, no, I'm not giving up a week of my summer to go stay with a priest and they weren't having it either.

It obviously tore apart his immediate family. They were a big family, like 10 kids. When their mom died, the other kids wouldn't sit with him. And the siblings of the cousin who killed himself cut off all contact with the whole family, in addition to confronting the priest. Horrible all around, all from someone who until the first allegations were brought up was a hero in the family.

My other encounter with a molester was in 3rd grade. I was a latch-key kid and after school started going to this shop of the town's retired doctor. He had a bunch of wood-making stuff and equipment and I'd go with a few friends to use the saws, make some projects, watch some TV. He committed suicide one day and it turned out the police were about to arrest him for molesting a kid. I have no idea who the kid was, if it was a friend or someone from school. Again, nothing happened to me. But it was perfectly normal to go to someone's place by yourself as an 8-year-old even though, in retrospect, it all seemed like a plot of a very special episode of a sitcom. Then again, even today I think people would trust a doctor.

I don't have kids. But I don't think you can go around fearing that every teacher, coach or adult of authority is going to be a child molester.

 

Don't know of any ex-teachers busted for being molesters. Shortly after I graduated high school a health teacher murdered the drama teacher's lesbian lover. Actually, while I was there the band director quietly left town for his behavior with female students, but every school has at least one band or choir director targeting the kids, so that barely counts.

My wife and I knew a couple that was trying to adopt. The husband worked with my wife. My wife wrote a letter of recommendation to the adoption agency when they adopted a little boy. Later they adopted a girl, then moved to another part of the state and we lost touch. Years later the wife found my wife on Facebook. My wife asked her how the husband was doing; turns out he was in prison for molesting their adopted daughter. Sigh.

I never liked the guy much, but never saw THAT coming.

 

I say date because my understanding is that it was more than just sex, but I agree. Doesn't matter what either of them thought was going on there or that she was actually taller than him (No idea why, but that bit always pops into my head). She was 16 years old. That should have been enough for him to stop himself.

 

I've told it here before, but I worked with a reporter who was arrested for molesting teen boys, but got it pled down to lesser charges.

He went to another paper, and when he died a couple years ago, he was practically canonized in his obit, including quotes from kids about weekend campouts. It sent chills down my spine to read it.

 

A couple decades ago, I worked with a guy who had been a preps reporter for some 15 years. He would often make borderline-pervy comments about certain female athletes.

His wife had been a player on one of the first all-area softball teams he had picked (this was a decade or so before I worked there). Supposedly they didn't date until she was out of college but it still seemed pretty skeevy.

More recently, at another paper, I worked with a photog close to 70, marking the days to retirement. One time we were sent together to cover a softball game. I was leaning against a fence looking over the field, and he elbows me and says in a loud stage-whisper, "hey, get a look at that. Rowwrrrr."

He leers over at the rear ends of maybe a dozen girls sitting on the top row of the bleachers. They were all wearing low-rider jeans and they all had thongs (or more) peeking out for visibility. And yes, they all looked very, ahem, nice, in those low-rider jeans.

I very nonchalantly said, "Mmmmm hmmm. Very interesting. I think I'll watch the game now." And I edged a step or so away from him.

Well, that wasn't good enough for him, he had to offer some more highly captivating commentary, this time in an even LOUDER stage whisper. "Man, what are you talking about, that's some SWEEET ASS over there buddy, yeah, that's some damn yummy stuff!! (CLICK!! CLICK!!) Yeahh baby, these are going to make some fine pictures on the darkroom wall."

The heads of several parents swung around, all casting a high-intensity death stare at him. And me.

I sidled three or four (or six or seven) more steps away from him and growled, "shut the hell up man, these girls are in high school, they could be your great-granddaughters for christ's sake."

All of a sudden he gets all huffy and says, "well, they wouldn't wear those jeans sliding halfway down their asses if they didn't want guys to look."

By this time I had sidled about 50 yards away from him so I hollered out, "Why don't you just shoot pictures of what's going on on the field?"

I got far enough away from him I could call the office on my cellphone and I told the desk editor, "Why don't you buzz Old Skeevy on his cell and send him to some other assignment and get him out of here?"

The guy asks, "why?," and I said, "if he hangs around here about three more minutes making loudmouth comments about hot high school girls in their tight jeans, he's gonna get both of us lynched before we get out of this ball park," so happily a minute or so later Desk Guy makes up an excuse why Uncle Skeevy had to leave right that minute.

Incidentally, this dude was also married (his 3rd) to a woman 30 years his junior. Who had a daughter in high school who was involved in ballet and gymnastics. And he had pictures of his teenage gymnastics (step)-daughter, doing very gymnastic-type things (if you know what I mean and I think you do), tacked up all over the darkroom wall.

Yeeeeesh. Skeevy.

I always wondered what had gone through the mind of Late-30s Wifey, when her near 70s-hubby began asking to shoot up rolls and rolls of film of Teenie Daughter doing splits and somersaults in her skin-tight spandex leotards.

I can imagine what probably went through the mind of Teenie Daughter.