Did Molestation Hysteria Imprison an Innocent Man??

 

The Fourth District Court of Appeal recently overturned the firing of an elementary school teacher from San Diego, who served over three years of a 15-year-to-life sentence, after an earlier appellate court threw out his child molestation convictions, according to Metropolitan News-Enterprise.  Justice Terry O’Rourke said the teacher was fit to teach and had not engaged in immoral conduct. He also ruled that Superior Court Judge William Nevitt, who had upheld the termination, had failed to show compelling reason to overrule the commission on professional competence, which had vindicated the teacher.

Thad Jesperson, who taught at Toler Elementary in the Clairemont neighborhood of San Diego, had fought for 10 years to clear his name of accusations that he molested students between 2001 and 2003. During his first trial he was convicted of only 1 of the 13 counts for which he was charged, with the jury deadlocked on the remaining counts. During his second trial he was again only convicted of 1 count, with the remaining resulted in acquittal or further deadlock. In his third trial he was convicted of 7 counts and sentenced to 15 years to life. However, in 2007, all convictions were reversed due to juror misconduct and ineffective counsel.

Despite the 2007 ruling in his favor, his school district fired him in November, 2008, for “unfitness, immoral conduct, and failure to maintain a professional relationship with students.”

So did he or did he not act inappropriately or unprofessionally? Was the school district protecting students from an actual threat, or was this yet another case of administrators hanging a teacher out to dry in order to appear to be protecting children?

The commission on professional competence ruled that the allegations were unproven. While Jesperson had been “physically affectionate” with pupils—something that is relatively routine in the lower grades, where children are constantly in need of reassuring hugs and affection, particularly when they hurt themselves—he had not done so in an inappropriate way, The children initially denied that Jesperson had touched them in an inappropriate way and only changed their stories under pressure from parents, police and social workers, his attorney said. One student’s testimony was particularly suspicious, claiming the “bad” touching occurred every day in front of all the other students, something that is quite unlikely. Yet Judge William Nevitt said he believed her based on the “hundreds” of children’s testimonies had had heard in juvenile court and used this argument to justify ignoring the commission’s administrative findings.

Parents today have plenty to worry about, from the terrible state of the economy and material insecurity to the threats posed by climate change. Perhaps nothing is scarier to parents than the possibility that a stranger at the playground or school yard will steal their child’s innocence and cause lasting emotional scars. This risk, however, is probably no greater today than in the past, but our awareness of it is, thanks to better preventative education and outreach programs, increased reporting and monitoring, and a prurient media that whips up hysteria with every accusation, even the meritless ones.

Heightened awareness and fear are no justification for witch hunts, judicial hysteria, or imprisoning innocent people. The current witch hunt for pervy teachers is reminiscent of the satanic day-care molestation panic of the 1980s and 90s, in which a few false accusations led to the arrests and harassment of numerous innocent people and a mass fear that every preschool was a front for satanic molestation cults.

The most infamous of these cases involved the McMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach, California, which resulted in the longest and most expensive criminal trial in U.S. history and perhaps the most frivolous. From the start, observers and police should have been skeptical of the absurd claims of hidden tunnels, ritualistic animal slaughter, Satan worship, coprophagia, bloodletting and orgies.  Furthermore, the credibility of the McMartin’s accuser, Judy Johnson, was suspect as she was a diagnosed schizophrenic and chronic alcoholic.

Rather than doing its job of investigating, questioning and critiquing with a skeptical eye, the media simply aped back the ridiculous allegations with prurient delight, thus pandering to the public’s lusts and fears, exacerbating parents’ anxieties about their children’s safety and creating mistrust of all preschools and day care centers. The SDUSD case was not much different, with absurd accusations by a young child that she was molested daily in front of the entire class and a gullible judge buying it all, as well as media reports with salacious descriptions of what he supposedly did to the girls.

Jobs Trump Pay & Conditions Says San Diego Labor Council

Huck/Konopacki Labor Cartoons

Collaborate with the bosses! Accept their unsubstantiated claims of declining profits and their insane demands for pay cuts and speedups, or else feel their wrath by way of mass layoffs.

Sound like the insane ravings of a corporate CEO, or right wing pundit or politician?

Think again.

This was the cry of the San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor Council, which recently called on the San Diego Educators Association (SDEA) to work more closely with San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) in order to avert layoffs, according to San Diego 6.com.

To be fair, labor council CEO Lorena Gonzalez said she was not making concessions for SDEA and she did ask SDUSD to provide “real” numbers so the union could better assess their actual financial status. However, the council’s demand that they go back to the bargaining table and work together suggests the council has lost patience with SDEA, (which is a member of the labor council), and that they expect a quick resolution, even if that means more concessions on the part of the teachers. It also suggests that they expect SDEA to accept the district’s dubious financial prognosis and use it as a basis for determining how much to concede, rather than backing the teachers’ reasonable expectation that the district should be the party to compromise find a way to compensate and treat them fairly.

The union and the district have been in a contentious contract battle since last summer, when the district demanded numerous concessions from SDEA, including furloughs and a continuation of the pattern of no pay increases that has been ongoing for the past few years. The district says the concessions will avert mass layoffs, yet Reduction in Force (RIF) notices have already been sent out to nearly 1,700 SDEA members (one in five district teachers, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune). The district claims that either the concessions or the layoffs are necessary in order to close a $120 million budget gap. However, if the district follows through with all these layoffs, they will be unable to open school in the fall because there won’t be enough teachers.

Lorena Gonzalez, CEO of the Council, said "We can't sit back and wait for things to work themselves out like in years past." Yet she did not make it clear how today is substantively different than in years past. Sure, the budget gap is larger than usual and the number of layoffs is high, but large numbers of teachers are laid off every year due to budget uncertainties and most get hired back once the budget is ironed out in the fall.

There is, however, one difference that neither the labor council nor the district want to admit: teachers may be unwilling to go another year without a raise, while continuing to have greater and greater job demands and duties imposed on them.

Like most large labor organizations around the country, the labor council’s officials are more concerned with a possible public backlash against unions (and the potential threat to their livelihoods as union officials) than they are with the pay, working conditions and wellbeing of their constituents, San Diego’s teachers and other working people. Thus, getting the teachers to agree to concessions, in exchange for reduced layoffs and labor peace with SDUSD, become much more important than wages and working conditions.

SDEA has apparently come to an agreement with SDUSD that would give teachers a raise starting July 1. However, the district plans to lay off 20% of teachers starting on June 30 to pay for it, according to the Union-Tribune. It is a false causal relationship. The district has plenty of other ways to cut costs, starting with its bloated administration. It can also start doing what district throughout the country should have been doing long ago: demanding an increase in local and state tax revenues.

From the union’s perspective, it was the right move. Their members deserve a raise, as do all working people, who have been paying for years for a financial crisis caused by the wealthy and which has benefitted only the wealthy.

The district cannot open school in the fall with a 20% reduction in teachers without significantly increasing class sizes and cutting course offerings, something they are unlikely to accomplish without a significant backlash from teachers and parents. If they do, the union should strike.