Reply to Whitman Teacher and Crew Coach Arrested

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I’m a Whitman parent whose daughter knew this teacher well (not crew team). The one-on-one texting and car rides are highly improper and were not known by parents or other teachers. (Spending time in a teachers classroom at lunch or after school is quite common, however.) It was known only that he favored female students. On the flip side, [b]when my daughter was going through a hard time, he was the only teacher [u]who seemed to care[/u] and talked her through it. It helped, and nothing improper happened between them[/b]. Part of being a good teacher and coach is being able to relate to your students. Clearly, he crossed the line. [/quote]

[b]Predators groom many children at the same time and they seek out a weakness that he/she can exploit. [/b]

Teachers are supposed to treat all students equally. To favor female students over male students is a Title IX violation and another red flag.

This person was breaking the rules.  People may not have known about the criminal acts, but staff, students, and parents knew he hung out with students in his classroom, he favored female students over male students, and he was privately texting students. Child predators do not look like the Boogie Man.  They are the popular coaches/teachers that go out of their way to violate rules under the disguise of “helping” students.

Following the Code of Conduct protects students, staff, and MCPS. The danger is non enforcement and exceptions that a predator can exploit to sexually abuse students. The Child Abuse Webpage for MCPS used to list several years worth of letters to the community.  [u]For the majority of cases, predators violate the Code of Conduct before abusing a child. Waiting for the arrest to happen means MCPS missed an opportunity to protect a child before the abuse occurred.[/u]

More action is needed by MCPS to monitor staff. An independent investigation needs to happen with the Whitman case to find the gaps that need to be filed. The harm cannot be undone, but are there lessons to learn and improvement needed for child safety across MCPS? Yes.[/quote]

+1. Whitman parent PP, your DD was a grooming target of Shipley's as well, it appears. If you read things like the article I posted upthread from the New Yorker (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/09/24/in-plain-view), you can see that the predator plays the long game and casts a very wide net (being a teacher/coach allows them to do that--so many students, new ones every year). They proceed gradually, step by step, to gain the confidence of the victim--and often the parents--by tiptoeing over the line, a small line each time, and perhaps the tiptoeing is a grey area.

You say, "he was the only teacher who seemed to care." For Shipley, having you and DD consider him that way means that he [u]scored[/u] (regardlesss of whether her "hard time" was academic or social in nature):
-He gets your daughter to open up to him, and so gets to know her vulnerabilities. 
-He gets to see what kind of support systems she has. 
-He finds out how strong these systems  might be ('[i]children of vigilant parents are deemed to risky[/I]', to paraphrase the article). 
-He finds out what kind of boundaries she has, what kind of instincts she has... e.g. whether she appears uncomfortable when he crosses a teeny line (maybe a small comment by him that could be taken in different ways). 
-He ends up with an image of "caring"/ "trusted helper" in your/DD's eyes which can offset any red flags that occur--even you admit that he was known to favor female students; I assume your DD, and possibly you as well, knew this at the time he helped with her issue...but she/(+you?) were willing to not question that, because during this time he was so helpful, right?
-He gets DD to share with her friends how understanding and "caring" he is, so that other students can come to him with their troubles.
-He gets one more person in the school community to become his defender if his actions are ever challenged.

For your DD's sake and the sake of your family, I'm glad nothing went further. It appears from your perspective that he didn't cross any obvious lines as she continued to interact with him for a while. Maybe it's because he sensed you were an involved parent, maybe because he saw your DD as someone who had a good instinct for what was appropriate or not. Maybe it was because he was in the process of getting sexually involved with one of the other victims and couldn't afford to open up another avenue to explore that might take more time and risk. For whatever reason, the fact that you/DD didn't see his actions as inappropriate doesn't mean that this behavior is ok and that he should be considered in the 'caring' /'great teacher' light.

I'll bet if you asked your DD about the specific questions, framing, etc. of their conversations, if she remembered them precisely (which she understandably may not), you could see that he was probing at least a little. You didn't say that she took a class from him. If she didn't ....you didn't find it unusual that a teacher who didn't have her for a class was the only one willing to help? Why would the other teachers/staff 'not have cared'? Perhaps she had a tip from other girls to go to him first? Or she found his warm, friendly manner very approachable and sought him out, and his prompt responsiveness made her not need to find other caring teachers/staff? Perhaps teachers/staff at the school are overwhelmed by kids facing issues like the one your DD was facing, and it's general practice for them just to keep a little distance (for their own self-preservation of time/energy)?

In hindsight, do you still think it's ok that he was so caring to your DD?

The underlined statement from the immediate PP is very astute and spot-on: "For the majority of cases, predators violate the Code of Conduct before abusing a child. Waiting for the arrest to happen means MCPS missed an opportunity to protect a child before the abuse occurred."[/quote]

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