Real journalism: The Los Angeles Daily News exposes an epidemic of child sex abuse in L.A. public schools
Just in the last 15 months, some 600 teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) have either been fired, have resigned, or have been administratively "housed" due to allegations of serious "inappropriate conduct," much of it involving sickening child sex abuse.
Barbara Jones at the Los Angeles Daily News newspaper exclusively reported this shocking revelation this past Sunday.
Your tax dollars funding child sex abuse
Jones conducted a series of interviews with current LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy in which the pair reviewed cases where teachers were just recently fired. Among the jaw-dropping allegations:
- an elementary school teacher molested seven students, boys and girls;
- a high school teacher forced boys and girls to role-play sex acts between "master and slave," and would act out scenes in which he'd put his head on students' chests;
- after a girl complained that a high school teacher had sexually harassed her, the district confiscated his computer and found 22 films and 42 images of pornography, along with inappropriate emails to students;
- a female teacher took along a female student on a visit to a Hollywood sex shop, where the instructor purchased sex "paraphernalia";
- a female middle school teacher engaged in a years-long "salacious and inappropriate sexual" relationship with a former female student;
- a male middle school teacher had girls write poems about their buttocks (he had complaints in his file dating back to 1997 which were ignored);
- a male high school teacher was admonished at six schools for acts such as "ordering [girls] to stand up in class to exhibit the size of their breasts and making them do jumping jacks in the classroom";
- after a male middle school teacher accidentally projected hard-core pornography to his class, the district confiscated his computer and found two X-rated videos and 636 pornographic images.
These eye-popping charges are on the heels of the news just two months ago that LAUSD paid out nearly $30 million to settle lawsuits stemming from alleged abuse at just one elementary school. A teacher at the school is alleged to have spoon-fed semen to his students as part of a "tasting game."
And just last week, an attorney claimed that he had proof that LAUSD knew about abuse at yet another elementary school before parents reported the abuse to police.
Mainstream media: Missing in action
Kudos again to Barbara Jones
of the Los Angeles Daily News
Not one media outlet outside of Los Angeles has reported on these incredibly disturbing revelations, and even the attention in L.A. itself is negligible. 600 public school teachers are out abusing innocent children today, and the Los Angeles Times has yet to even report on this story.
While the mainstream media continues to hyperventilate over alleged episodes of abuse many decades ago in the Catholic Church – often involving priests who have long since died – it continues to turn a blind eye to these massive cases happening today in our taxpayer-funded public schools.
The glaring double standard never ends.
Kudos once again to Barbara Jones. If the journalism world knows what it's doing, there should be a Pulitzer Prize heading her way for her groundbreaking work in protecting children in Los Angeles. But don't bank on it.
I'm not reading where it says what % of those 600 teachers were terminated for sexual abuse? And of the 600 only 100 were fired and what % of those hundred people were released for sex abuse? Probably the same rough percentage as the Catholic Church when you count head for head per student and in an equal demographic comparative. So? Nobody said you had a lock down on depravity or corruption. And?
Jim you are not very good at math.
Six priests in one year in the whole USA versus 600 or 100 governmnet school teachers in just one school district.
Get it?
Or do you only care about sex abuse if it is in the Catholic church?
Well, if I were in ‘counterintelligence’ – let’s say – and I came across a document from a known and established source X, and there was this much discrepancy between the material I am looking at and the usual and voluminous prior material we have on record for that source X, I would say that the source of the material I am looking at surely has not originated with source X.
Be that as it may.
JR has (somehow; see foregoing paragraphs) touched upon a point that I had mentioned in comments on a prior LAUSD TMR article: if you were to 1) take all the allegations against all the priests made since 1950 or 1960 or going back to 1940 (the years I have seen mentioned in the Jay Reports or elsewhere) and 2002 – recalling of course all of the questions we have been discussing about the genuineness and credibility of those allegations – and then 2) if we somehow came up with a number of total interactions with youth (and thus potential opportunities for ‘abuse’ – however defined) for each priest serving in those years in the US, and then 3) multiplied all those interactions by the number of priests and then take that number and multiply again by the number of years (going back to 1940, 1950, or 1960) and then 4) calculated for an ‘incident percentage’ (like airlines do to calculate the number of safety mishaps per passenger mile), I would say that we would get a number with quite a few zeroes to the right of the decimal point (as you look at it on the page) … in short, a safety record any airline would love to have.
And if you wanted to take it back “centuries” – presuming you could get your base numbers right – then I think the calculations would follow that trend.
And, of course, if you perform the calculation for the post-2002 period in the US, then the safety record is only going to improve.
There is, of course, the problem of arriving at a reliable number for step (2) above: how many interactions would each priest have with youth in the course of his days, and of his years of service?
I would not be so sanguine as to toss off the assertion (even when neatly qualified; again, this is not the established modus cogitandi of source X) that such calculations would yield “the same rough percentage as the Catholic Church”.
The LAUSD – by the most recent figures I could find (for 2011-2012, and I am not claiming here that they are definitive) – has 662,180 students, 45,473 teachers, and 38,394 other employees. The LAUSD was formally erected in July 1, 1961 – giving us a bit more than half a century. Trying to calculate an ‘incident per passenger mile’ for LAUSD would be difficult enough, but for the Church it would be even more difficult.
Yet – thanks to the suggestion channeled to us through JR from whatever source (and this comment of 5:03Pm does makes more sense than his prior efforts with literary references, e.g. Kurt Weill) – we can form a better conception of the type of complexities in analysis and assessment that precisely were not bothered-with in the Catholic Abuse Matter.
But this TMR piece once again demonstrates the long-sustained specificity of the focus on the Church.
Iris, I'm sorry for the people abused everywhere; but I do only focus on the corporate Catholic victims because I am one and the Church thinks it's above the law. And it certainly thinks it's above the victims. Example P's entire rational. It's really like the old circus barker shooing off a kid interupting his shpiel.i.e. "go 'way boy ya bother me"
P.S. In a former thread P's word I used wasn't PTSD it was the word neatly, He uses neat a lot not as much as gambit or cartoon but you know what he says.
As far as quoting Kurt Wiell. It was referencing an athiest's take on why we are here and where we are in the universe. No big deal.
Also please read this if you want statistics.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-haven/we-the-people_4_b_3254727.html
The name – to repeat – is ‘Kurt Weill’. And as I recall its deployment when the comment was originally made, it was irrelevant to the conversation. So – yes – no big deal at all.
JR poignantly goes for the little-kid-put-down-by-circus-barker framing (really, is this all coming from the Source X on whom we now have so voluminous a record?); but I’d put it this way: when trying to operate complex aircraft on serious mission, I don’t feel comfortable with a lot of ‘general aviation’ types around, either incapable of managing their craft or – as we not infrequently see here – just in the air to try to get in the way and for the fun of taking ‘chicken’ runs at the larger aircraft. Wheeeee.
But perhaps JR takes pride in the fact that he “bothers” people, such that such bothering is a) his life’s mission and b) the all-encompassing and overriding justification for everything he does and says. Who knows?
But to more substantive material.
We see once again the effort to put time into a permanent couch-potato feedback loop for one’s own purposes (whatever those might be): the Church “thinks it’s above the law”. If this were possibly and perhaps at least somewhat plausible 30 years ago, it is a plaint that has long ago been surpassed by events.
And then to this link to an article if we “want statistics”.
First, nobody in their right mind would simply want to Google ‘statistics’ – it’s a huge field. The comment thread here was working on something rather specific in regard to statistics. And by the most amazing coincidence, JR offers an article on ‘statistics’ that has nothing to do with the actual point of the thread.
But – more revealing – the link actually does open up some interesting cans of worms.
The article is actually based on a recent speech given by an advocate for something, who is also an “Honorary Senior Adviser on Global Issues” (whatever that may mean) at Harvard.
He offers by claim and assertion what JR apparently would call “statistics”: a) 66pct of adults in drug treatment report being abused as children; b) 80pct of young adults who suffered child abuse or neglect met the criteria for at least one psychiatric disorder by age 21; c) 42pct of children who are molested are suicidal by their teens; d) child abuse and neglect in the 0-6 age-range is “growing at a very high rate”; and he concludes by warning that “Justice is coming” – which he eventually defines as “conscience”.
But (a) through (d) are not given any supporting information as to their origin.
And (a) uses the word “report” when it should probably use the word “claim”, since “report” implies that there is a proven fact already existing, and that has not been established in (a). Indeed, no competent clinician – especially in dealing with drug abusers these days – can disregard the uncongenial but ineluctable possibility that claiming to be “abused” is also an excellent path nowadays for quietly dodging responsibility for one’s addiction. And, of course – and as we have seen in the second Philly trial – abusers and addicts can have a very tenuous attachment to truthfulness simply by the operation of the addiction or a pre-existing psychological or characterological condition.
And (b) infers that somebody at some point has established that the young adults i) had indeed suffered “abuse” (however defined) and then ii) had established a clear line of causality between the abuse (however defined) and that “at least one psychiatric disorder”. If we have learned nothing from looking at assertions and claims in this queasy modern era, we have learned not to let ourselves get worked-up until we are sure there is a clear line of causality and we are getting worked-up over the right thing, i.e. the clearly causal factor.
And (c) is an assertion that participates in the same problems as (a) and (b).
And (d) singles out the 0-6 age range, which is not the primary age range in any of the current or historical Catholic Abuse claims. So there must be a lot of abuse going on in other venues. Wouldn’t those other venues be this gentleman’s (and thus JR’s) primary focus of concern? But – of course – none of that matters because “the Church thinks it’s above the law” … which neatly anchors JR to the Church and the 1980s (if not also prior decades as well).
So this article – which began as a speech designed to whip up the troops – will need a couple of things before it can stand-up as a serious element in the discussion: a) it has to clarify or justify its use of “report” when ‘claim’ would be more accurate.
And b) it has to clearly establish that in each specific case or in specific classes of cases, abuse (however defined) is the proximate cause of later psychopathy and derangement. And in doing so it has to deal effectively with the equally possible alternative chain of causality: that there were pre-existing issues and problems within a given person which – yes – i) might have been triggered by abuse and/or ii) might simply have presented the individual with a neat excuse and smokescreen by today’s cultural excitements.
Otherwise, like insufficiently-trained firemen, we will be aimed toward throwing our water at the smoke rather than on the seat of the fire.
None of the foregoing is intended to minimize what I am not at all surprised is a shocking increase in the failure to properly nurture and raise children nowadays. But it most certainly is intended to flag the necessity of having a clear and demonstrably accurate concept of the problems and the causes of the problems – rather than simply finding a convenient target and glomming onto it for one’s own purposes and effectively distracting whatever resources of public attention and policy-making can be mustered.
In that regard, finally, I would ask anyone to name any other corporate entity in this or any other country that has in place a program of requirements as clear and comprehensive as the program that is the subject of the recent audit/Report on Catholic measures to deal with abuse. (DP has provided a link to the text – about 70 pages, very readable and with numerous charts and graphs, in the other most recent article on the TMR site.)
You raped and abused children and now you have a good program to end that abuse. Goody goody and so? What was supposed to happen sameo sameo? O.K. you seem to need this here it is: CONGRATULATION! GOOD JOB! Happy now?
You don't have charts on how the Church has helped the already harmed victims do you?
No?
And now you've said my comment was irrelevent. Thank you. I keep forgeting your the smart one and I'm not. I'm sure you'll keep reminding me. Again thank you so much.
You're very welcome.
What I "need" – if one were to put it that way – would be some ratonal and believable backup evidence for the numerous assertions and claims. That would be very nice.
And how, pray, are we to have charts of something that you have already said cannot be done? However, I do remind readers that there is a section in the new Report that covers the amounts and the breakdown of money spent on victims (genuine and otherwise-classifiable).
I'm confused, When did I say charts regarding what is or isn't being done for victims could not be done?
As far as I knew it hadn't been done. And why would I trust a Catholic corporate funded study about anything regarding victims that never mentions the SNAP fraud?
When did my pronouncements become law? If that were true, your rants would disappear.
In the matter of JR’s comment of 1106 today.
Neat avoidance gambit. And your confusion can hardly be surprising.
But you had said a while back that there is nothing the Church can do for victims. Do you not recall that?
Thus – according to your thinking – we surely can’t expect the Church to have a chart of things that have been done when it is impossible for such things cannot be done in the first place.
Your pronouncements aren’t law – at least for anybody else. But there is the matter of consistency in thinking. That’s a law to which we are all subject.
This is news?
Ignore Robertson
Paul, I believe it would have to be a unanamous effort .
Honey, there's consistancy then there's petrification.