Has to be the charter schools De Blasio wants to close
Via The Daily Mail
Over the last five years, more than 100 New York City schoool employees, including teachers, have engaged in racy extracurricular activities — sexual or ‘inappropriate’ relationships with students — over the last five years.
The shocking statistics comes from Richard Condon, the special commissioner of investigation for the New York City Department of Education, who has looked into more than 593 complaints about illicit teacher-student relationships, the New York Post reported. Of that number, 104 cases were confirmed as relationships of either a sexual or otherwise inappropriate nature.
‘I’m absolutely stunned at that number,’ Laura Timoney, a Community Education Council member whose 15-year-old daughter attends a city high school on Staten Island, told the newspaper. ‘It’s shocking, but what do you do to stop this?’
Even more troubling, the more than 100 trysts are only a small part of the sexual misconduct complaints Condon’s office received.
For example, in 2013 alone, his office received 566 complaints against Department of Education employees involving a ‘sexual component,’ which includes groping, molestation and assault. It opened 233 investigations and substantiated 24 percent, or 58, Condon reports.
Social media and smartphones may have fueled the epidemic of hookups, according to experts, with teachers and students able to chat without parents or colleagues knowing about it.
If a kid texts a teacher at 9 or 10 p.m. asking about homework, the reply goes straight to the child’s bedroom,’ said Frederick Lane, author of the book ‘Cybertraps for the Young.’
‘These one-on-one conversations can turn personal, creating a quicker sense of intimacy,’ Lane added. ‘The electronics make it easier for a predator to gain the trust of a child and then exploit that trust.’
In 2011, Felicia Barahon, a teacher at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, became pregnant. The father was a student.
Terri Miller, president of Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct and Exploitation, or S.E.S.A.M.E., said teachers can seduce students by making them feel special and cared-for.