A hot line for students to report sexual abuse by teachers or other school employees is being set up by a former Chicago public school teacher who says she quit teaching after trying in vain to help students bring charges against a faculty member who they say sexually abused them.
Ann Benedict, a former high school teacher, said the hot line will put students from any school system in the area in contact with counselors, social workers, psychologists and attorneys who have offered their services at no cost. The volunteers will help students confront school officials and will monitor each case to protect students against possible retribution.
Susan Lock, administrative assistant in the Cook County state`s attorney`s office, says the idea for the hot line grew out of the Women`s Issues Task Force she directs. Benedict, a former member of the task force, said she intends to ask State`s Atty. Richard Daley to be on the hot line`s advisory board.
”We support this hot line,” Lock said. ”At some point we have to start protecting children as much as we protect defendants. That is what these women are doing, and I wish them luck and hope they can do it.”
In the last two weeks, six Chicago public school employees, including five teachers, have been arrested on charges of sexually abusing students. Also, a high school teacher from south suburban Country Club Hills and an Elgin high school coach have been fired in connection with sexual abuse of students.
The hot line, Stop Sexual Abuse of Students, will be staffed by volunteers from 2 to 8 p.m. weekdays beginning March 17. Its number is 427-9830. Start-up funds for the hot line have come from the Center for Community Research and Assistance of the Community Renewal Society.
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Chicago public school officials said only that they would ”consider”
the hot line.
This is not the first time Benedict and the co-director of the hot line, Mary Gerace, have attempted to galvanize public support to combat sexual abuse of students.
”We are not just reacting to what has happened in the last few weeks,”
said Gerace, a property manager. ”This is not a new problem.”
”We tried in the `70s. We testified before a state legislative commission, and we tried to get people interested, but we ran out of money,” said Gerace, former director of the nonprofit Chicago Council on Crimes Against Women. ”Now after 14 months of work with the state`s attorney`s office, we are finally off the ground.”
Benedict, a member of the boards of Chicago Catholic Women, Cook County Democratic Women and the Chicago Metropolitan Board for Higher Education, says the hot line is necessary because the present system does not adequately protect students.
”When there is a sex abuser in a school, it is usually common knowledge among the teachers,” Benedict said. ”The teachers don`t come forward because the school system is an army system, and you don`t make waves. Students are also very reluctant; they are very frightened.”
Benedict says she speaks from experience. In the late 1970s, she and two other teachers at a Chicago public high school tried to help a group of students bring charges against a teacher they said had abused them.
”A student came to me and said, `How do you get a teacher off your back who wants sex?` ” Benedict said. ”We made inquiries and found several other students who also said they`d been sexually abused by the same teacher.”
After months of working with the students, getting lawyers involved and forwarding depositions to the school board`s law department, the case fell apart when the students withdrew their complaints over summer vacation.
”Several told me they had been threatened,” Benedict said.
Benedict resigned from her teaching position that summer. The other two teachers were reassigned to less desirable positions and eventually left the system.
The accused teacher was transferred and is teaching in a Chicago public high school.
School officials confirmed that charges had been made by students against the teacher and later dropped, but said they could not remember if legal documents had been filed.
The recent arrests in Chicago and firings in Elgin and Country Club Hills have added ammunition to what is expected to be a hotly contested debate over proposed legislation to require school employees to be fingerprinted.
A similar bill was defeated last year because of strong teacher union opposition, although a weaker bill requiring background checks for any criminal records was passed.
Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D., Chicago) has said he will ask legislators this session to approve the bill, to be introduced by State Rep. Lee Preston, (D., Chicago.)
Preston said teachers should be subject to tough screening because ”they have a highly sensitive occupation.”
”In no way whatsoever am I pointing a finger at teachers,” Preston said. ”But if a person was arrested for molesting a child, as a parent I have a right to know that. I don`t want that person in front of my kid`s class.”
California, Nevada and Florida require public school teachers to be fingerprinted.
In California, which has been fingerprinting teachers for 15 years, the prints are kept on file and if a teacher is arrested in a sex crime, the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing is notified, said Walter Taylor, staff counsel with the commission. Local police departments also must notify local, county and state school officials within 24 hours.
In the last four years, 65,528 applicants for teaching positions have been checked, and 1,530 people have been denied credentials or have had their credentials revoked or suspended.
”People convicted in other states have come here,” Taylor said, ”and with the FBI rap sheet and through our Department of Justice, we usually pick them up.”
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In Illinois, the job of recording the additional fingerprints would require an automated fingerprint identification system, said Gary McAlvey, director of the state Department of Police Bureau of Identification.
The cost would be $17 million, and so far the General Assembly has appropriated $2.3 million to ”begin acquisition.” An additional $1.2 million is in Gov. James Thompson`s budget released last week to ”plan and prepare” the system.