It took three months from the time a 17-year-old Kelvyn Park High School student first accused Principal James Moffat of sexually molesting her until Chicago school officials decided they had enough evidence to remove him from contact with students.
Had the girl instead accused one of her parents, state officials might well have moved in to protect her within hours.
That wide disparity is the result of an ambiguity in the state`s Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act, which enables Chicago school officials to employ a double standard for the reporting of sexual abuse allegations. Accused teachers are shielded from state investigations that accused parents must undergo immediately.
It is a double standard that State Senate President Philip Rock (D., Oak Park), a principal sponsor of the law, says was never intended.
”Frankly, this surprises me,” Rock said. ”If there is indeed a loophole in the law, we ought to hurry up and close it. I think it was the clear intent of the legislature that any and all of these reports are to be made immediately so that an investigation can be started right away.”
Chicago police and officials of the Illinois attorney general`s office agree. They say every allegation of child abuse, whether against a parent or a teacher, should be reported to the police and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) rather than left to school officials to investigate.
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But Chicago school officials maintain that teachers deserve to be protected from immediate police investigations into such charges, which they say can easily be lodged by vengeful students.
The reporting act requires teachers, as well as doctors, social workers and others who routinely come in contact with children, to immediately call the DCFS if they ”have reasonable cause to believe” that a child has been abused or neglected. The department is obliged by law to begin an immediate investigation.
The problem, officials of the attorney general`s office say, is that the reporting act defines a suspected abuser as a parent, guardian or ”any person responsible for the child`s welfare,” but it does not specify whether teachers fall into that category.
Chicago school officials and the Illinois State Board of Education narrowly interpret the law to refer only to abuses that occur in a child`s home, at the hands of a parent or guardian.
If the suspected abuser is a teacher, principal or other school employee, school officials insist, they are permitted to investigate the allegations on their own before notifying state authorities or police.
According to Chicago school board policy, police or the DCFS are to be notified only if a preliminary investigation by a principal or other school official finds ”substantiated evidence of child abuse.”
That provision of the Chicago policy establishes a higher threshold of proof than state law requires before police or the state agency are to be summoned.
”A teacher is not expected to call DCFS every time a charge is made, but only when there is substantiated evidence of that charge,” said Deputy Chicago School Supt. Joseph Lee, who oversees the reporting policy adopted in 1984 in the wake of three alleged incidents of child molestation by school employees.
”Both the teacher and the principal must make a judgment based on the information available to them at the time,” Lee said. ”I would want to know whether the police would want to be called every time we have a student making an accusation.”
Chicago Police Sgt. Farley Miles, commander of the special investigations unit of the youth division, said police ”should be called immediately.”
”I don`t think a principal is in a position to make an in-depth investigation as to whether or not there has been child abuse,” Miles said.
”Police are much better qualified to conduct this type of investigation than school officials. Teachers are better qualified to teach.”
The case of Moffat, 56, at one time second in command to then-School Supt. Joseph Hannon, focused new attention on reporting procedures in the Chicago schools.
A social worker at Kelvyn Park High School, on the Northwest Side, said she was first approached by a student complaining of sexual abuse by Moffat in December, 1984. The social worker, Marsha Niazmand, said she soon learned of several other students making similar complaints, and she sent a written report on the matter in early January to her district superintendent, Clara Rosiles.
But it was not until three months later, on March 25, the day Manford Byrd took over from Ruth Love as school superintendent, that Moffat was removed as principal.
School officials repeatedly have insisted it took that long to build a case against Moffat.
The school board voted to suspend Moffat April 17, and he was later indicted by a Cook County grand jury for allegedly taking indecent liberties with five students between 1982 and 1984. He has pleaded innocent to the charges and last week began fighting his dismissal in a closed proceeding before a hearing officer appointed by the State Board of Education.
State and local school officials say it is fair and sensible to protect teachers from outside investigations when they are accused by students of sexual abuse, even though parents enjoy no such protection.
”For the kids, an accusation is just so many words,” said Don Turner, vice president of the Chicago Teachers Union. ”There is no risk for them to make the charge. And there is no redress to the damaged reputation of the accused teacher. The charge sticks, even if they are exonerated.”
”There`s an assumption,” said Leo Hennessy, assistant superintendent for supervision for the state board, ”that a teacher is a responsible, respected adult who has already passed a certain level of certification. Teachers have a certain amount of standing, and if they are placed above a parent in status, apparently that`s the way our system is structured and I`m satisfied with that.”
The Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act ”is aimed at primary care givers, not at teachers,” said Julia Dempsey, general counsel for the state school board. ”We have never taken the position that this applies to teachers accused of sexual involvement with students or corporal punishment.”
But Shaun Denney, chief of the opinions division of the attorney general`s office, disputed the double-edged interpretation of the reporting act.
”Maybe the law needs some statutory modification to make it a bit clearer,” Denney said, ”but it seems to me ludicrous to say that because of these definitional discrepancies, an abused child report should not be made in the case of a teacher.”
DCFS officials said that allegations against teachers should be reported to police, but they share the belief of state school officials that the allegations need not be immediately brought to DCFS`s attention.
”We have investigated (complaints about teachers) when the charges seem serious, but we do not do it as standard practice,” said Tom Villiger, deputy director of the agency. ”We usually follow up with the school by notifying the school of the report we have received. My understanding has been that persons who have knowledge of sexual abuse by teachers are required to notify police.”
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Just how often Chicago teachers or other school personnel are accused by students of sexual molestation is not recorded. Officials in the school board`s safety office say they are asked to investigate about 10 reports a year, of which more than half generally prove to be unfounded. Dempsey said she could recall only about five cases in the last decade that came to the state board`s attention.
”Given my knowledge of the Chicago system, three months (to investigate the Moffat case) is about par for the course and I would agree that`s too long,” Dempsey said. ”But I don`t think you have a documented problem in the schools with just one case where there might have been a delay. You can document hundreds, perhaps thousands, of children who are abused in their homes. I don`t think you can document that that is happening in the schools at all.”
Part of the decision whether to pursue a case and report it to state authorities will inevitably be based on the credibility of the student making the accusation, said school board attorney John Wren.
”If the child is reliable, is not a troublemaker, if the story is plausible, then I`d say there`s a pretty good chance that it happened,” Wren said.
But Wren also noted that it was precisely because Moffat allegedly chose troubled students as his victims that it took school board investigators three months to build a case against him.
”It took a lot of effort to find these kids,” Wren said. ”Some had dropped out, some had moved. He picked kids who weren`t exactly A students, and that will have an effect on their credibility.”