[Athens]

I would never want to be a teacher in this current environment, so much has changed since when I was a kid. And kids know they can get away with it. Thanx to the internet Kids are well informed on how they can manipulate parents and teachers to do what ever they want now.

Falsely accused teacher calls for accountability - British Columbia - CBC News

The complaint against Dowell came after she told a grade five boy not to throw away an uneaten banana at lunch. Dowell was on lunch room duty, during a one-day teaching assignment at R.L. Graham elementary school, in Keswick, Ont.

"I told him to eat it…or put it back in his lunch box and take it home. His parents paid good money for fruit like that for him to eat," said Dowell.

The following week, while teaching at another school, she was suddenly sent home and told she was under investigation by Ontario's Children's Aid Society.

"Children are getting a lot more savvy these days. It used to be, 'make the occasional [substitute] teacher cry.' Now they know they can have you suspended."

Without talking to Dowell, the school immediately called the Children’s Aid Society, which it is required to do by law, when there is an allegation of abuse.

Dowell was removed from the board’s substitute teacher roster. Her union told her she might even be arrested.

"You are told police could come to your door any moment. What do you tell your family and friends? It's a horrible situation to be in, knowing that you're totally innocent," said Dowell. "I knew I had never been alone with a child. I never put my hands on a child…but it felt like I was guilty until proven innocent."

"The Society…has determined that Ms. Dowell did not use excessive physical force with the students in her class or intentionally embarrass the student during her interactions with him in the lunchroom," read a letter to Dowell’s lawyer from the York Region Children’s Aid Society.

"The Society is not substantiating any concerns related to the alleged use of physical force or public humiliation by Ms. Dowell, nor would the Society be concerned should Ms. Dowell return to her occasional teaching position."

So I don't know about most of you but the premise of innocent until proven guilty is something that really means something to me. Even if it involves children, I don't think its unreasonable to allow a person to continue on with there day to day lives until proven guilty or at least criminally charged with something from enough evidence to substantiate it.

I imagine its the same in the US, or heading that way too when it comes to the power of kids and using laws and regulations to retaliate or get away with things.

I totally feel very sorry for this woman. But here is the catch 22, if you punish people for making claims of abuse you risk those that have suffered abuse from not coming forward. Personally I think the biggest problem was how it was investigated. I don't think she should have been suspended. She should have been interviewed right away and told she was under investigation.

[Waragainstsleep]

She should be allowed to sue the kid's parents. Clear case of defamation.

[Athens]

I would be in more favor of suing the school and powers to be for how it was handled.

[ghporter]

It sounds like the school was forced by law to call in the outside agency. Either way, this should be a big civil suit and hopefully a wake up call that writing rules the way they are is a bad idea. No local investigation? No "our security video showed something very different from the allegation"? Dumb.

[turtle777]

Similar crap happens with adults all the time.

Women (in most cases) accuse men of sexual assault. Doesn't matter what really happened, man is guilty until proven innoccent.

-t

[ghporter]

The worse side of that is that it is still relatively uncommon for a woman to come forward on her own because of an actual sexual assault or harassment incident. The "system" (including the press) pounces on a guy that someone comes out of nowhere and accuses, but they're all pretty quiet when one after another, several women come forward and say "the first woman showed me I could be brave enough to confront him" and en mass accuse the creep.

That's another example of how public perception affects reality. Even today it is very difficult for a woman to come forward. And today it is much more likely that someone will be erroneously accused of "abusing a child" than a true abuser be investigated before they seriously harm a child. As a society, we know what circumstances lead to child abuse, but for some reason there is no real effort to watch those situations. For example, here in Central Texas, there is what I call the "boyfriend-babysitter syndrome." Women who have children and jobs have their worthless, unemployed boyfriends sit with their kids while they work, and no-account slug of a boyfriend is so unprepared to do anything with kids that he often "snaps" and abuses the kids for...being kids-loud, poorly behaved, or just being babies that cry. Yet while Child Protective Services is often aware of these domestic situations, they have neither the staffing nor the authority to "put people on a watch list." This gets kids killed. Yet telling Johnny that he needs to sit down and quit disrupting the class often gets teachers here disciplined, just like in BC. Dumb. Very dumb.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Similar crap happens with adults all the time.

Women (in most cases) accuse men of sexual assault. Doesn't matter what really happened, man is guilty until proven innoccent.

-t

Thats more of a social consequence than an official policy for the most part.

Suing the kid and/or its family would at least teach people to be less frivolous with their accusations. Suing the school gets you a higher payout, but it comes out of the public pocket and hence costs all the kids as well as the taxpayers.

[Athens]

Originally Posted by ghporter 

The worse side of that is that it is still relatively uncommon for a woman to come forward on her own because of an actual sexual assault or harassment incident. The "system" (including the press) pounces on a guy that someone comes out of nowhere and accuses, but they're all pretty quiet when one after another, several women come forward and say "the first woman showed me I could be brave enough to confront him" and en mass accuse the creep.

That's another example of how public perception affects reality. Even today it is very difficult for a woman to come forward. And today it is much more likely that someone will be erroneously accused of "abusing a child" than a true abuser be investigated before they seriously harm a child. As a society, we know what circumstances lead to child abuse, but for some reason there is no real effort to watch those situations. For example, here in Central Texas, there is what I call the "boyfriend-babysitter syndrome." Women who have children and jobs have their worthless, unemployed boyfriends sit with their kids while they work, and no-account slug of a boyfriend is so unprepared to do anything with kids that he often "snaps" and abuses the kids for...being kids-loud, poorly behaved, or just being babies that cry. Yet while Child Protective Services is often aware of these domestic situations, they have neither the staffing nor the authority to "put people on a watch list." This gets kids killed. Yet telling Johnny that he needs to sit down and quit disrupting the class often gets teachers here disciplined, just like in BC. Dumb. Very dumb.

Its a no win situation for those that get involved. Up here the government tries to keep families together after years of separating them through the use of foster care. End result, the situation isn't much better. Even with monitors and family assistance and counselling, not every case ends up being happy for the child or the family.

I really don't think there is any good solutions, nothing that fits every situation anyways. We need experienced people that have the freedom to use there own judgement on how to approach each case as a individual situation. But of course when they make a mistake they will get the brunt of it as well.

Like Turtle was saying the man is always automatically at fault. It reminds of me of the Pitt Meadows Rave gang rape case. Was a big rave on a farm not far from where I live. A couple was having sex some place on the farm and some idiot decided to take some photos and post them up on facebook. The photos where discovered by the parents of the girl who then called the cops. The Knee Jerk reaction from the RCMP was a gang rape and had a press conference right away about it before they had any facts of the situation. At the end of the day a couple years later only 2 charges ever where layed, one against the teen of taking the photos and posting them up on the internet. And one against the boy who had sex with the girl because she was intoxicated and legally can not consent to sex while intoxicated. The guys reputation was tarnished pretty bad from the media attention, her life was disrupted pretty good too. And the worst part was the facts from actually witnesses which apparently got ignored by the RCMP who where gun ho in making this a gang rape case. But it really came down to a case of sweet innocent girl being busted for having sex in a very public way and went with what people assumed happened to save face. Boy suffers greatly. Guilty before innocent.

Makes you wonder how many people could be in jail today over the guy is always guilty first mentality.

[Athens]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

Thats more of a social consequence than an official policy for the most part.

Suing the kid and/or its family would at least teach people to be less frivolous with their accusations. Suing the school gets you a higher payout, but it comes out of the public pocket and hence costs all the kids as well as the taxpayers.

I disagree. I think the problem is totally on HOW its investigated. Its dangerous to sue the kid and family because real victims might not speak out in fear of being sued for coming forward.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by Athens 

I disagree. I think the problem is totally on HOW its investigated. Its dangerous to sue the kid and family because real victims might not speak out in fear of being sued for coming forward.

Things need to be separated out a bit then.

Cases where there is clear indisputable evidence one way or the other need to be treated differently from cases which are less clear cut. Someone is going to have to make a judgement call to decide which is which.

Regardless if indisputable evidence exists exonerating someone of a crime like this one, defamation of character has clearly occurred and a law suit is then a viable option for the falsely accused. There will be damage to reputation and very likely loss of earnings that the false accuser could/should be liable for.

[ebuddy]

Originally Posted by turtle777 

Similar crap happens with adults all the time.

Women (in most cases) accuse men of sexual assault. Doesn't matter what really happened, man is guilty until proven innoccent.

Or in the child/teacher scenario if the teacher happens to be a hot blonde female messing with a male student; the "you know he loved it" mentality sinks in and she's off scott-free. They may even convince people the boy maintained some control over the female teacher and that she was victimized, but if it's a male teacher and female student... LOCK HIM UP!

[Athens]

Female teachers get away with it often

2 cases after a quick search

Jury reaches not guilty verdict in teacher sex trial - Saskatchewan - CBC News

B.C. teacher acquitted of sex charges faces perjury trial - British Columbia - CBC News

[Chongo]

This is an interesting read. This is study done by the US Dept of Ed. It references studies done in Canada as well.
Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature

10.1 Consequences for abusers. In an early study of 225 cases of educator
sexual abuse in New York, all of the accused had admitted to sexual abuse of a student
but none of the abusers was reported to authorities and only 1 percent lost their license
to teach (Shakeshaft and Cohan, 1994). All of the accused had admitted to physical
sexual abuse of a student but only 35 percent received a negative consequence for their
actions: 15 percent were terminated or, if not tenured, they were not rehired; and 20
percent received a formal reprimand or suspension. Another 25 percent received no
consequence or were reprimanded informally and off-the-record. Nearly 39 percent
chose to leave the district, most with positive recommendations or even retirement
packages intact.
Of those who left, superintendents reported that 16 percent were teaching in other
schools and that they had no idea what the other 84 percent were doing. A recent report
on sexual abuse in New York City indicates that 60 percent of employees who were
accused of sexual abuse were transferred to desk jobs at offices inside schools and 40
percent of these teachers were repeat offenders (Campanile and Montero, 2001). In
many instances, agreements are made to avoid legal battles with the alleged abuser
(Shakeshaft and Cohan, 1994). .

[mattyb]

The child who made the accusation should be blind-folded, back to a wall, and shot.

[Athens]

The legal issues, liabilities, costs, and damages to reputations have all created a culture of shoving sexual abuse under the carpet. This is true for schools, day cares, sporting teams and scouts. The very public nature of these things and the potential financial costs really puts victims at a major disadvantage. On the face of it the organization cares about the children, but deep down they are as concerned or more so of the costs, liabilities and image so they pursue methods to keep things quiet.

[Athens]

Skimming and reading sections of that report Chongo provided I found something of interest

Finally, abuse is allowed to continue because even when children report abuse,
they are not believed. Because of the power differential, the reputation difference
between the educator and the child, or the mindset that children are untruthful, many
reports by children are ignored or given minimal attention.

The report covers Canada, UK and the US so I don't know where this is reference to but since it left out anything about Canada and the UK in that section I will assume the US. If that's the case I think we are seeing to extremes. In the US the teachers by default are believed and in Canada the child is. Both causing serious problems. A middle ground needs to be developed where the interest of the child and the interest in the teacher are both protected until something is conclusive.

If that was a reference to all 3 locations, Canada, UK and the US then it appears or seems like a lot has changed since the data used in that report was collected because time and time again I see cases of teachers being accused, and publicly condemned even before facts are released, at least here anyways.