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Allegations
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COSA - Casualties of Sexual Allegations
Newsletter, June 1998
Falsely accused teachers
Felicity Goodyear-Smith
COSA has had a number of falsely accused teachers
contact us in recent months. While certainly some teachers do sexually molest
children, it is all too easy for pupils to make wrongful allegations and be
uncritically believed. Pointing the finger at a teacher gives students
incredible power if they are angry with him (or her) and want revenge for being
disciplined or sighted in some way.
The case of acquitted ex-teacher Dr John Edgar, reported in our Courts section,
demonstrates this well. Police chose to believe the boys rather than Edgar and
other witnesses including fellow teachers. By all accounts, Edgar was an
excellent teacher, and his loss from the profession depletes the already tiny
pool of men prepared to teach in the 1990s.
Edgar has called on male teachers to quit in interests of their safety. COSA
can appreciate his concern, and endorses his claim that teaching leaves them
wide open to sex abuse charges. However we are gravely concerned by the loss of
men from our schools. With the excessive rise in children being brought up by solo
mothers in the past 2 decades, so many children lack any male role models in
their homes. And not only are men too frightened to teach – they are also wary
of being sports coaches; scout masters or instructors of other extra-curriculum
activities for fear that they are accused.
The protective actions now promoted for teachers such as avoiding all touching
of children and never being alone with a child may help prevent some from being
accused. However they are not sufficient for all. COSA knows of cases
(including the Edgar case) where the abuse was supposed to have occurred in
full view of pupils and/or teachers, yet the police persisted because they
believed the child complainants’ testimony. The non-touch policy may be useful,
but it is tragic that a teacher cannot comfort and clean up an injured child;
lend a shoulder to the deeply distressed; reward an achievement with a pat on
the back, or offer physical support in gymnastics without being accused of
‘inappropriate touching’. Nor are these measures realistic. Teachers may find
themselves alone with pupils no matter how hard they try – a child might enter
the classroom where a teacher is working alone during a break; some subjects
such as music tuition are expected to be taught on a one-to-one basis.
The New Zealand Education Institute (which acts as a teachers’ union) is
minimising the problem. They recently stated in a teachers’ publication (Eduvac 4 May 1998, sexual misconduct
allegations a rare occurrence: NZEI Chief, 3) that it is rare for teachers to
face false allegation charges. From the many stories were have heard from NZ
teachers over the years, COSA would have to disagree.
Part of the problem is the never-ending expansion of the definition of ‘sexual
abuse’ and the instruction students get from pre-school days about ‘bad touch’
and the terrible psychological damage it causes. This environment makes it all
too easy for children to misinterpret or distort innocent acts as having sexual
‘intent’.
They may also decide retrospectively that a sexual encounter must have been
‘abusive’ because a boy or girl-friend has rejected them, or they have fallen
out. Recently 201 girls and 176 boys aged 16 to 18, from 45 Auckland High
Schools, were surveyed about sexual abuse experiences. The results, published
in the CYPS publication Social Work Now,
found that nearly half of the boys and 65% of the girls had experienced ‘sexual
abuse’ while dating. Abuse was defined from unwanted kissing through to sexual
intercourse. Most adults will recall adolescent sexuality as minefield to
navigate. Early sexual experiences might be exciting, painful, confusing,
over-whelming. While in no way endorsing unwanted sexual advances being forced
on teenagers by their peers, I suspect that in many instances the mutual fumblings
of inexperienced sexually aroused teenagers are being excessively elevated to
the status of ‘sexual abuse’. One of the dangers of this definition, of course,
is that serious sexual molestation gets trivialised.