Allegations of Sexual
Abuse |
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The Education Review Office warns
boys are underachieving in class and a lack of male role models has been
blamed. Are sexual abuse safeguards harming children and damaging men's role
as caregivers? John
Edgar is busy writing a book on how to educate gifted children. Two
years ago, he was an enthusiastic teacher, acknowledged by colleagues as
having exceptional talent. That
was until seven young boys swore the teacher had touched, rubbed and stared
at their genitals in changing rooms and the playground. Although
a dozen adults, including duty teachers, said it could not have happened, Six
months and a jury trial later, Edgar was acquitted. But his 12-year teaching
career was finished. In an outburst outside court, Edgar warned men not to
take up teaching. He
remains bitter and disillusioned with a system he claims presumes guilt. "It's
terribly easy today for a male to be accused of sexual abuse. Children can
make a complaint to deflect attention from their wrongdoing or to get back at
you. Teachers live in fear, wondering when it is going to happen to
them." Some
of the stories in his case, says Edgar, were ridiculous. One child recounted
the teacher carrying him across the crowded playground and indecently
assaulting him while trying to put the youngster in a microwave oven. Motivation,
says Edgar, was part malice, part fantasy. "Children don't realise the
tragic consequences of what they are doing." Police
investigators assumed guilt because he is gay, charges Edgar. "Teaching
is doubly hard for gay men. Some people still think all gay men are
paedophiles." Former
detective chief inspector Rex Miller said the decision to charge Edgar was
not automatic. "Police are not homophobic. We conducted extensive
interviews with children, parents, and teachers to match allegations with
time and place." Police
have been accused of taking the easy option in sexual allegation cases,
preferring to let the courts decide guilt, rather than risk accusations of
not been thorough in their investigations. But
"We
take particular care with sexual offendings and have to provide proof beyond
reasonable doubt." He
concedes there have been recent cases which, when examined in a courtroom
setting, did not look strong. "You
can pick holes in anything once you dissect it in court. Some prosecutions
might seem borderline in retrospect. But it's wrong to say police throw
people before the court willy-nilly. We scrutinise everything." Tom
Barnes (not his real name) exists on reduced superannuation -- little more
than the dole -- and does voluntary work teaching English to immigrants. His
life collapsed the day he was charged with groping a young female pupil.
Police pressed the case even though none of the other 30 students in class
could recall the teacher acting improperly. "I
pumped myself full of Prozac to cope," he recalls. "It was
terrifying. "The
drugs made me paranoid. I had a psychotic fear of being labelled a child
molester." A
father of two adult children, Barnes had been teaching for 30 years. It
took less than a morning for the judge to throw out the case, noting it was
inconceivable that no-one else would have noticed anything inappropriate. "I
thought I'd go back to stuff it up their noses -- the police and board of
trustees," says Barnes. "But walking down the street I would get
these nice, embarrassed smiles from people. "It
hit me I could never relax around children again. There's some paranoid and
twisted parents out there. And what board of trustees would risk hiring me
now?" These
cases highlight male teachers' fear of being wrongly accused of sexual abuse.
But
police are unapologetic. They know the dangers. "There is the potential
for paedophiles to use an occupation to gain free access to children,"
says Churches. Yet
while there have been horrific cases of youngsters' trust being betrayed by
sexual predators, there is a growing voice that says society is in the grip
of a moral panic. High-profile
sexual abuse cases send the message all men are suspect; they cannot be
trusted with young children. Early
childhood educators have clamoured to define "appropriate"
behaviour following major prosecutions such as the Christchurch Civic
Childcare Centre. Thirteen
staff were sacked in 1992 after sexual abuse allegations. Only one, Peter
Ellis, was convicted and sentenced to 10 years' jail. He continues to protest
his innocence. The
Christchurch City Council was ordered to pay $1m in compensation for unjustified
dismissal to the other accused workers, reduced to $172,978 on appeal. Hysteria,
say concerned observers, is being fuelled by good intention -- to protect our
youngsters from deviants. But
the net, they claim, is being thrown too wide. Too many innocents are being
accused. Increasingly,
they say, men are afraid to show intimacy to youngsters. Perfectly natural
responses are being interrupted and distorted. Concern
is mounting that overzealous prevention policies are not only turning
talented males away from the childcare and teaching professions, but actually
harming children in their formative years. Primary
teachers' union the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI) Code of Practice
stipulates no touching of students and not to be alone with a pupil. "It's
a bit hard on teachers -- especially when little kids throw themselves at you
-- but that's the world we are living in," says Pamela Hill, regional
secretary, Northern Region of the NZEI. "Children, and adults, must be
protected." Secondary
school teachers abide by similar rules enshrined in the Post Primary
Teachers' Association's Code of Ethics. They must not, for example, enter a
room where students are dressing, or invade a student's personal space by
leaning over them too closely at a desk. "We
stress `don't put yourself in any situation that could put you at
risk'," says PPTA adviser Bronwyn Cross. Several
leading educators argue youngsters are becoming more distrustful of men as
they are submitted to a variety of "inappropriate sexual abuse
curricula". The
Auckland District Men's Network for teachers was formed last year -- prompted
by the John Edgar case -- to thrash out how male teachers should relate to
boys in class. "We
dare not give comfort and emotional support like we used to," says
acting spokesman Garth Houltham. "Teachers today have to be
stand-offish. It's a sad, negative environment. But we won't leave ourselves
in a position to be accused." Richard
Johnson, from the Teacher Education and Curriculum Studies faculty at "Society
is scared to trust men," he says. "We are changing classroom policy
on the basis of untruths. Research shows sexual abuse is most likely to occur
outside childcare centres, away from staff." The
early education expert recalls he began as an enthusiastic young pre-school
teacher in the early 1980s, but felt increasingly uneasy. He
began to second-guess himself about once taken-for-granted routines like
changing nappies, wiping runny noses and unbuttoning and buttoning a
two-year-old's jeans. He
worried when supervising a group of three year old girls involved in outdoor
sprinkler play, clothed only in their underpants. Today
this fear of a sexual abuse complaint exists in Training
colleges, child centres and schools stress no-touch policies are for the
protection of all staff, but male teachers say they are primarily aimed at
them. Hugging
is forbidden at childcare centres. Men are taught the "proper" way
to hold a child -- side-saddle on one knee, never between the legs -- and
always to have at least one adult witness when supervising a child. Some
pre-school centres admit privately they won't hire men. "Why take the
risk?" says one owner. "There's a stigma of a man wanting to work
with young children," says another. Centres
worry what parents will think if there is a male on staff. "It's bad for
business." The
slide in the number of male teachers at New Zealand's early childhood
centres, kindergartens and primary schools concerns Sarah Farquhar, a
lecturer at Massey University's Department of Learning and Teaching. "We
need men for healthy child rearing." Farquhar
has done surveys on why men are under-represented at pre-school and primary
school. An
alarming trend, she says, is men leaving early childhood teaching in droves, scared
off by the fear of being wrongly accused of sexual abuse. In 1971, males made
up 37.8% of primary teachers. That has plummeted to barely 20% (or 4787 from
a total of 24,608) today. Of the 5740 primary school teacher trainees, barely
1000 are men. "Children
need to see men in caring, nurturing roles, says Farquhar. "So many boys
today are from single-parent families. Soon there will be no men in early
education. Where are the role models for these boys?" A
teacher with 15 years' experience recalls the incident that shook his
confidence and made him forever wary. The
mother of the engaging little girl under his supervision was a good friend. One
day the infant complained of "being sore down below." The family
doctor raised the possibility of molestation. "The
mother told me she immediately thought of me and her husband. "We
laughed about it later when it turned out to be a urinary infection. But it
struck me that thought is always there, in every mother." He
says many men today father with fear. "I
know dads who won't take a bath with their child." Anton
Wartmann, a senior teacher with the Canterbury-Westland Free Kindergarten
Association says male teachers are nervous. He
is one of only eight men out of 180 teachers at the association's 62 centres.
Ten
years ago, he reckons he was naive. "I thought if I got accused of
anything my conscience was clear. Now I've seen how drastically an accusation
can affect a teacher. "It's
traumatic for them and their family, even if there's no substance to it. You
only need to be accused once." Author
Lynley Hood is putting the finishing touches to her book on what she views as
the politicising of sexual abuse over the past 25 years. Earmarked for
release later this year, the book focuses on the Men
have become stereotyped as dangerous sexual predators, she says. "This
issue is not whether sexual abuse happens -- of course it does -- but how
widespread it is and how much is it a threat to society. "A
generation of women has been brought up to believe all men are rapists."
Some
male teachers are convinced sexual abuse has been politicised to keep men out
of early childhood teaching. They
cite cases of women childminders killing their charges, but say they have not
heard any calls to stop females caring for babies and youngsters. The
issue has been manipulated and sensationalised, says Russell Ballantyne, from
the Dunedin Kindergarten Association. He
claims an element of the women's movement in government and early childhood
colleges are happy to maintain a climate of mistrust. "They believe men
have no place teaching small children." Ballantyne
points to brochures for early childhood teaching courses: "They all
feature women working with children, never a man." There
is bias in recruitment literature, concedes Lorraine McLeod, associate dean
of early childhood education at the Auckland College of Education. But she
says the low male participation also reflects the profession's meagre pay
($22,000-$37,000) and low status. Phillip
Ozanne is one of a handful of men studying early education. At 32, he is a
latecomer to teaching. "I've
always wanted to teach young kids," he explains. "They have so much
learning potential." His
wife is a secondary school teacher. As part of his studies, Ozanne spends eight
weeks a year at kindergartens and day care centres. Most have no-touch
policies. "That's
hard if a child is bawling their eyes out. But some centres let me
cuddle." Ozanne
says it can get lonely being the only man among 20 women. But other teachers
have been supportive. "It's the parents that need convincing." Educators
are unanimous in agreeing men are crucial for the balanced development of
young children, especially boys. Yet, they say, there seem to be no
initiatives to retain or attract male teachers or efforts to confront social
phobias. Farquhar
says the Government must step in and stem the crisis by funding and promoting
recruitment of male teachers. Teaching
colleges, she says, must also address their orientation toward females. "This
issue is urgent. It must be taken seriously. Government, unions and training
providers need to get consensus or teaching will soon become
women-only." A
third of boys have no father at home. Half the nearly 10,000 divorces in Boys
are often adrift in life, failing at school, awkward in relationships and at
risk for violence, alcohol and drugs, says Steve Biddulph, author of Raising
Boys. "If we get men involved with under-fathered boys, before they make
trouble, we can turn their lives around." A
major rethink has begun in the Researchers
at the Touch Institute are studying how instinctive, caring physical contact
can be reintroduced into the classroom. But
early educators in They
say the change in public perception will start when society sees more men as
primary caregivers in the home. John
Edgar is adamant he will never return to teaching. "I would feel like a
figure of suspicion. My teaching style was energetic, not authoritarian. It's
not healthy for kids to be taught by a cold disciplinarian." Tom
Barnes is rebuilding his life after moving back to his home town. He
insists he has not become cynical. "Unfortunately,
many teachers live in a sheltered environment. They can be naive, unaware
there is a nasty, vicious world out there." --------------------
CAPTION:
Kevin
Stent: HANDS OFF - teaching student Phillip Ozanne with Bronte Bergquist POLITICAL
. . . author Lynley Hood |