Teacher-student relationships: Ohio near top of nation

• In 2014%2C 35 Ohio school employees were accused or convicted of inappropriate relationships with students.
• Two of the cases occurred in Licking County.
• Nationwide%2C Ohio had the fifth highest number of cases in 2014.

NEWARK – She was 16 at the time. She remembers because it was the night before Thanksgiving when her teacher sent her a message.

"Hey, how are you doing? How's your family?" the message said.

It was a bit weird — the teacher had never talked to her before outside school — but she didn't think much of it.

Then it took a turn. The conversation didn't end, and the teacher started sending sexual messages, asking her to do things with him. She wanted to tell someone, but she was afraid.

"It was kind of scary," said the central Ohio woman, whom The Advocate is not naming because she was a victim and a juvenile at the time the incident occurred.

"I was going to tell somebody, but I was scared, because I thought I was doing something wrong. ... I didn't know what to think. I didn't know what to do."

Ohio is fifth in the nation when it comes to school employees either accused or convicted of inappropriate relationships with students, according to reports from Drive West Communications. There is no official nationwide database of teacher-student relationships, so Drive West gets its data by tracking media reports.

• From Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 9, 2014, Ohio saw 35 such cases, including two in Licking County, data show.

• Texas was by far the worst offender in 2014, with 110 reports of inappropriate relationships, according to Drive West.

• Next in line was California, with 45 reports, followed by Pennsylvania with 42 and Florida with 38.

The central Ohio 16-year-old kept getting messages from her teacher. He made her promise not to tell anyone. He was persistent.

He kept asking her how "naughty" she was and what she might do in the bedroom.

The girl told one of her friends what was going on, but she was too afraid to tell an adult.

"I was afraid to get in trouble, and I kind of have a soft heart, so I didn't want him to get in trouble," she said. "It's really hard to explain what I was feeling."

Broken trust

At school, educators are meant to protect and guide students. Too often, however, the inverse happens. Rather than protecting students, some educators take advantage, abusing power and violating trust.

It happened at Newark City Schools, where then-band teacher Anthony Miller was arrested in February for engaging in sexual conduct with at least three former students.

Miller was convicted of sexual battery, sexual imposition and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, among other charges. He was sentenced in August to four years and 10 months in prison.

It also allegedly happened at Heath City Schools, where former guidance counselor Mackenzie Matthews was charged in November with sexual battery stemming from a alleged sexual relationship with a former student.

Matthews, 34, is out on bond, with her next hearing scheduled for Tuesday.

Educators have a huge influence on students. For many, they'll remember their grade-school teachers their entire lives, said Newark Superintendent Doug Ute.

"We're affecting and shaping minds. You affect kids for years and years," Ute said. "That's why we got into the business — to have an impact on students — and it needs to be a positive impact."

By the numbers

Of Ohio's 35 cases in 2014, as tracked by Drive West:

• 63 percent involved male school employees; 37 percent involved female employees.

• The average age of the accused educator was 38 for men and 33 for women.

• At least 31 percent of the cases involved social media or texting.

"I say 'at least,' " said Terry Abbott, Drive West chairman and a former U.S Department of Education chief of staff, "because sometimes we've found the media stories don't disclose whether text messaging or social media was involved. I suspect the actual percentage is much higher."

In Newark, much of the case against Anthony Miller relied on social media. Investigators gathered many pages of private Facebook messages written by Miller and the victims. The messages were sent at various times of the day, though often late at night.

With one victim, Miller sent Facebook messages asking if he was good-looking and telling the victim she should want him. They bantered back and forth for a bit, then the victim asked Miller a question:

"Just curious as to why you're so game lol," she wrote.

Miller responded: "I like sex, a lot."

Victim: "Good enough reason for me."

Miller: "Yeah? So you're interested?"

Victim: "Only an idiot wouldn't be interested. I'm not an idiot."

Miller gave his cellphone number and Snapchat name to students. He asked for and sent pictures, and he joked about masturbation and sexual favors.

He called the victims pretty, commented on their clothes — specifically swimwear and tight pants — and told them he enjoyed looking their way during class or band practice.

He asked one victim on Facebook: "what are u up to?"

"Just got done working out haha you?" she wrote back.

Miller asked the victim for a picture, indicating he was sexually aroused by the thought of her working out. Then he asked if she wanted an explicit photo of him.

Victim: "You just go straight for it don't you?"

Miller: "I'm not shy."

Months before his arrest, Miller was suspended without pay for three days as a result of inappropriate Facebook messages he sent a female student. He went back to work, however, and it appears the next time the subject surfaced was when he was arrested.

Miller is serving his sentence at the Noble Correctional Institution. Through a prison spokeswoman, he declined to comment for this article.

Learning opportunity

Ute looks at Miller's case as a learning experience for the school and community. It was a terrible situation, but it's also an educational opportunity to remind teachers of the rules, students of what is OK and what is not and parents to be vigilant when it comes to their children and social media.

Newark's policy — which Miller blatantly violated, Ute said — is that teachers should never have one-on-one social media contact with a student. If a teacher needs to send a message, make it a group message, Ute said.

"We embrace technology, but we want to use it in a positive manner, and we want our staff members to use it when it's appropriate," Ute said. "It's just common-sense behavior, and we talk to our staff about that."

At the same time, it's important to avoid a knee-jerk reaction — punishing all teachers because one messed up, Heath Superintendent Trevor Thomas said.

It's not that new rules need to be created, Thomas said; it's that educators, such as Miller, broke the rules and the law.

"I've had some questions about, 'Should I do this? Should I do that?' My only answer is: Don't have a relationship with a student," Thomas said. "I'm not going to sit there and tell the whole staff they can't use text messaging because one individual had an an inappropriate relationship."

Thomas looks at Matthews' alleged case as an isolated situation. Still, when news broke, it was devastating, he said.

"It's very emotional. It's very damaging," he said. "If you abuse that level of parental role or authority, trust, responsibility, you're crossing a line. You're taking advantage of a student that is not able to make decisions on the same level as an adult — 18 or not."

Who's watching?

Nationwide, between Jan. 1 and Dec. 9 last year, there were 747 cases of school employees either accused or convicted of inappropriate relationships with students, according to Drive West. That's more than two cases a day.

In Ohio, the average was roughly three cases a month.

Perhaps part of the problem is it's difficult — without relying on outside sources such as Drive West — to determine exactly how many teacher-student relationships have gone astray. The Ohio Department of Education tracks "educator misconduct," but there is no database specific to teacher-student relationships.

In 2013, the latest report available, the department's Office of Professional Conduct investigated 43 reports of inappropriate relationships. Those would have all involved teachers and students, but could include any type of inappropriate relationship, said department spokesman John Charlton.

That could be a romantic relationship, it could be an abusive one or, for example, it could be a teacher who had a favorite student and bought him or her gifts or handed out unwarranted grades.

Abbott and his colleagues started tracking student-teacher relationships on and off in 2013 and full-time in 2014, so at this point, there's no historical data to compare with this year's numbers.

Anecdotally, though, Abbott has noticed an increase; nationwide, it's an epidemic, he said.

"I think that's the best way to describe it," he said. "When you've got 15 cases a week being reported? That's an epidemic, and we've got to do something about it."

Willing to say, 'No'

The teacher eventually stopped messaging the 16-year-old Ohio girl. She tried to just forget it ever happened, but her mother noticed something was wrong and went through the girl's messages.

Then they went to police.

"I was mad at her at first because I don't like people going through my stuff," the girl said. "But now, I'm happy that she did because it not only saved me, but it also saved a lot of people that he could have gone after."

In her case, the relationship never went past the messages.

But "some people aren't as willing to say 'No,' as I am," she said. "It was a bad experience. It was kind of scary to know a teacher would do something like that. But I just want to forget about it."

In some cases, it's an isolated problem: There's one bad apple in a school district who disregards rules and preys on students. In other cases — not often, but they exist, Abbott said — it's a cultural problem at a specific district.

Abbott points to one high school in Texas that had five teachers in a year and a half accused of inappropriate relationships.

"That tells me that leadership at that school or leadership in that district doesn't take this issue seriously," he said. "We need to change that culture. We need to make sure educators know that this is not alright. These are children coming to your school to be educated, not to be sexually assaulted.

"It's a big problem, and it's a growing problem that we must not ignore. We've got to pay more attention."

The fix?

It will no doubt be a long, difficult process, but Drive West Communication's Terry Abbott has several recommendations to curb student-teacher relationships.

• No. 1 is for school districts to crack down on social media policies. Nationwide, at least 36 percent of cases in 2014 involved social media, so that's where school officials need to start, Abbott said.

"Social media seems to erase that barrier that used to exist between teachers and students," he said. "I can't imagine a teacher walking up to a student in school and saying, 'Hey, would you like to see a naked picture of me?' But they will do that on social media."

• Districts also need to make classrooms more visible, Abbott said. That could mean adding windows, keeping doors open — anything to do away with a teacher meeting one-on-one with a student behind closed doors.

If a closed-door meeting is necessary, teachers should be required to report it to the principal ahead of time, Abbott said. That way, "everyone else in the building knows that teacher is alone in the classroom with the student," he said.

• From a legal perspective, Abbott urges for tougher, more uniform penalties. In some cases, the teacher gets decades in prison, he said; "then, you'll turn around, and you'll see a teacher sexually involved with a student who will get probation."

"Prosecutors need to get serious about this and need to make sure that these classroom predators — and that's what they are — make sure that they are appropriately punished."

• Finally, it comes down to education: "more frequent, regular, better training for teachers on how to look for these potential cases arriving and how to avoid them," Abbott said.

He also encourages parents to be more vigilant, particularly with monitoring text messages.

"You'll look at so many of these cases and see that it begins with a text message from the teacher in the middle of the night," he said. "Well, parents ought to be on top of that."

hsparling@newarkadvocate.com

740-328-8822

Twitter: @hksparling