The Trump Administration launched a nationwide crackdown on school districts enabling teacher sexual misconduct against children — an epidemic generating weekly headlines that legacy media largely ignore.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon sent a blistering “Dear Colleague” letter to U.S. school districts last month warning that districts failing to comply with federal law will lose federal funding.
This week alone, three cases made the news: a New Jersey special education teacher sentenced to 12 years for sex with an 8th grader, a California teacher pleading guilty to sexual penetration of a 14-year-old, and a Washington teacher sentenced to 15 years for repeated sex with a 13-year-old and filming the encounters.
The effort targets what is known as “passing the trash” — the practice of concealing sexual offenses and reassigning predatory teachers to other schools or recommending them as good hires in other districts.
“The Trump Administration has observed a troubling and recurring pattern in schools across the nation of credible reports of sexual abuse and harassment by adults in positions of authority going uninvestigated or of suspected offenders being transferred to new schools or roles in the district.”
McMahon cited the epidemic being enabled by “institutional silence and complacency” by school districts and teachers’ unions being committed “to shield their members from disciplinary actions.”
She called such practices a failure of their “moral and legal responsibilities to parents and students.”
The Department of Education is opening investigations into 20 school districts it suspects may not be complying with federal laws.
California and Los Angeles emerged as ground zero in the effort. A civil rights investigation into the Los Angeles Unified School District began in May, alleging administrators and the teachers’ union were “protecting sexual predators at the expense of students.”
McMahon cited reporting that found at least 67 cases where the state of California has not revoked the professional licenses of educators after school districts determined they had sexually harassed students or committed other types of sexual misconduct this decade.
Twelve of those teachers remain working in education.
Two decades-old laws are in play in the effort: a Title IX amendment in 1972 requiring schools with knowledge of sexual harassment or assault to promptly respond in a manner that is not deliberately indifferent, and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act requiring local districts receiving federal funds to prohibit schools from quietly removing perpetrators by helping them get jobs at other institutions.
“For example, the Department recently opened an investigation into the Los Angeles Unified School District for an agreement with United Teachers of Los Angeles that guarantees that teachers will be reassigned — not terminated or immediately removed from student-facing roles while officials investigate when they are credibly accused of conduct including maintaining a sexual or ‘romantic’ relationship with a student, creating child pornography, and failing to report suspected child abuse.”
McMahon cited a 2004 landmark study that revealed nearly one in ten students will be subjected to sexual misconduct by the time they graduate from high school.
That means millions of teens have gone on into adulthood with the demonstrated emotional and behavioral issues associated with those experiences, according to survivors, therapists, and child safety advocates.
Another ED-contracted study of 50 million students in nearly all of the 100,000 schools in the U.S., updated in 2022, showed a nearly 100 percent increase in educator rape or attempted rape since the 2004 landmark study.
Charol Shakeshaft, who authored both the study for the ED and a book on this subject called Organizational Betrayal, as well as contemporary researcher Elizabeth L. Jeglic of John Jay College, have both called the problem “rampant” in U.S. schools.
Shakeshaft’s follow-up studies for her book now put the percentage of students affected by sexual misconduct by the time they graduate at 17 percent, a seven-point increase.
Legacy media has largely neglected the troubling trend of the past two decades, instead focusing on scandals in the Roman Catholic Church and most recently the Jeffrey Epstein case.
Shakeshaft told National Review in 2006: “Think the Catholic Church has a problem? The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests.”
Chris Hansen — widely known for his two decades of busting hundreds of child predators in on-camera stings — appeared at a news conference in Sacramento this past week lobbying against a California measure to limit compensation for victims suing government employees, including teachers.
Mainstream media ignored the news conference.
More than a dozen teachers have shown up at Hansen’s “sting houses” over the years.
One episode early this year involving a school administrator in a major city stood out.
“We were doing a sting in Maryland, and a former teacher of the year in the Baltimore school district showed up expecting sex with 15-year-old boys. Turned out this 61-year-old man now was the administrator and head of the advanced placement and gifted learning program for young kids for the entire Baltimore school district. Now he’s charged with solicitation of minors crimes and in the Baltimore jail awaiting trial.”
Researchers Shakeshaft and Jeglic told Breitbart News other less salacious grooming behaviors by predators are often obvious in schools, but colleagues are reluctant to report them or accuse a fellow teacher so as not to disrupt school “harmony.”
California and New York attorney John C. Manly, founder of one of the most successful law firms in the country for high-profile sexual abuse cases in the Catholic Church and in school districts, said when it comes to administrators following the law “they just ignore it.”
His firm won $140 million in damages against LAUSD for the notorious Mark Berndt case where the teacher allegedly abused and molested third through fifth grade students for decades and in an infamous incident, fed cookies containing his semen to some children.
Scores of kids received $1.2 million awards.
“There is no liability unless administration knew and did nothing. With every school predator there is an enabler. And the enablers need to be held account.”
His firm has had cases in Los Angeles where administrators who failed to report got probation and were later promoted by their districts.
Manly said his firm has deposed “hundreds” of administrators in cases.
“The shocking thing is the absolute indifference of administrators and superintendents to the problem,” he said. “The minute you start sending administrators to prison this will all stop.”
There is no law requiring parents to be informed of sexual misconduct, the attorney said, while schools require parents to be informed of other health matters such as lice infestations.
Manly said there’s never been a legislative hearing on the local or federal level on the educator sexual misconduct epidemic, while far lesser issues are scrutinized by lawmakers.
“If parents understood the absolute scope of this, we’d have pitchforks and torches in the street, the tremendous number of children affected. The thing that’s maddening is the law doesn’t make your kids go to church where kids were molested, but the law mandates your kids go to school. We’re sending kids into a buzz saw.”
Secretary McMahon concluded her letter with a warning: “This epidemic of nationwide sexual abuse in our schools must end.”
