Molestation Charges--Why Did Schools React Slowly?

On March 22, 1984, Los Angeles County prosecutors announced that seven employees of the Virginia McMartin Pre-School in Manhattan Beach had been indicted on more than 100 charges of sexually molesting children who were in their care.

Many public school officials, though shocked by the report, noted at the time that this case developed in a sheltered, family run, private school. By contrast, they said confidently, the public schools had an open system and tight reporting procedures so as to quickly detect such a pattern of child abuse.

Just five days later, however, three children at the 68th Street School in South-Central Los Angeles told their principal that a third-grade teacher had fondled several girls during a recess period.

Not the First Time

This was not the first time that Terry Bartholome, 48, had been accused of abusing the children in his care, and to the embarrassment of the Los Angeles school district, it would not be the last.

Over nearly three years, through anonymous letters and complaints from children and parents at two schools, Los Angeles school officials heard reports about Bartholome.

What did not become clear to them has become dreadfully obvious in the last two weeks as 17 children have taken the witness stand in a criminal court in downtown Los Angeles to describe countless examples of what they say are “Mr. B” fondling girls or exposing himself in class.

And school officials are now asking themselves: How could it happen? How could they have been so slow to react to accusations that there was a child molester in their midst?

School board members, who are both appalled and angry over the incident, say it appears the huge district was snared by its own bureaucratic style. Rather than acting quickly on their suspicions, the principal, nurses, aides and regional administrators involved in the case made phone calls, wrote memos and tried to “document” the allegations being made against Bartholome. What they did not do is what the law requires: call the police to report their suspicions.

Called Inexcusable

“The administrators never rose above memo writing, paper shuffling and telephone conversations between the school and the regional office,” said board member Larry Gonzalez. “There is no excuse for that. It is inconceivable to me that these people didn’t use common sense and call police.”

“When I sat down and read the whole file on this case, I was appalled,” said John Greenwood, a board member who represents the Harbor area. “But it seems that no one put all the pieces together. One person had seen one report (of alleged molestation) and another (administrator) had seen another report, but no one got the whole picture.”

Though they lambasted the officials involved for their actions--or more correctly, a lack of action--which they described as “irresponsible” and “intolerable,” board members noted that the early reports from parents and children were vague and often contradictory.

“What the principal (Alice McDonald) has said is that none of the stories made any sense, that none of them could be corroborated by other students,” said board member Jackie Goldberg. “One report had a parent saying ‘my child has a vivid imagination and I just wanted her moved out of the classroom.’ Or a child would tell the principal that ‘this happened to Janie’ and when the principal questioned Janie, Janie would say nothing of the sort happened.”

In the courtroom on Wednesday, one child testified that she had stayed after school one day only to have “Mr. B” rub “his privacy” against her as she wrote on the blackboard. The girl reported the incident to her parents, but in response to a prosecutor’s question, she said, “I told them it happened to Ann.”

And what did she tell the principal, McDonald? “It happened to Ann.” But who did it happen to? “It happened to me,” she said.

Experts who have worked on child abuse cases say such responses are typical.

“It is quite common for children not to tell all the facts or even to deny what happened,” said Ken Freeman, a deputy district attorney who has worked on many child abuse cases, although not this one. “No matter how many times you tell them it’s not their fault, they still feel humiliation and that they are somehow to blame for it.”

Goldberg called it “a classic example of a child too embarrassed to say what happened to her telling an adult that it happened to someone else.” But, she added, “the principal should have realized what was going on and acted.”

Reports Called Vague

“I can understand why some folks at the school had doubts about this. The early reports were vague and didn’t pan out,” said Westside board member Alan Gershman. “No one (on the staff) observed anything. Students A, B and C would tell the principal that they saw D, E and F doing something with the teacher, but D, E and F would deny it. So the staff was confused and they would report it to the regional office, which would tell them to get more substantiation and written reports.

“So, I can understand the confusion. But the problem is that the law is clear: when in doubt, report it (to the police),” Gershman continued. “It appears we haven’t gotten that message across yet.”

McDonald and other administrators involved in the Bartholome case have been advised by the district’s legal staff not to discuss it and have been unavailable for comment.

The case has not only proved to be a major embarrassment for the school district, but it has driven a further wedge between school administration and the teachers’ union.

Top school administrators, trying to explain what seems inexplicable, suggested that the teacher tenure laws contributed to the dilemma in which the district now finds itself.

Because of tightly written tenure laws, school principals are “conditioned” to document charges and accusations against a teacher, they said.

“The whole procedure for school people is that you build a case against someone,” Gershman said. “You document and document because you (principal) are probably going to end up in court with an attorney making you prove what you’ve said.”

Teacher With Gun

School attorneys noted that it took five years and more than 70 documented charges to dismiss a teacher for incompetence in 1982. And just last week, the school board lost in a bid to fire a Locke High School teacher who took a loaded gun to school. An independent Commission on Professional Competence, which reviews teacher dismissals, agreed that the teacher had committed the offense, that it clearly violated district policies, but added “it was an isolated incident.”

“We had an airtight case. The guy not only brings a gun to school, but has it loaded and points it at a kid. But we still lost,” said school spokesman Bill Rivera, who said the board will appeal the ruling. “It merely underscores the usual response of an administrator to document everything and make sure you have legal grounds before you move.”

Goldberg, a teacher and a supporter of the teachers’ union, said the “strong gains unions have made in the teacher rights arena . . . probably hindered speedy action” in the Bartholome case. “No one is willing to move on an employee unless a lot of documentation exists. This principal didn’t want to take any action until she had something written down, until she had statements from two different sources on the same incident.”

‘Outrageous Case

Wayne Johnson, the president of the United Teachers of Los Angeles, grows livid over this explanation.

“This is the most outrageous case of administrative incompetence,” Johnson said, “and they try to blame it on the teacher tenure laws.”

The union, he said, defends teachers against unfair actions or arbitrary evaluations by administrators, not when they are charged with committing crimes.

“This guy (Bartholome) came in to ask us to defend him and we told him to get lost,” Johnson said.

The union leader added that he has no sympathy for the administrators “making excuses for not having done their jobs. They knew about this, they sat on it and they didn’t do anything. My feeling is that a couple of them ought to be fired over this,” he said.

So far, only one administrator--Stuart Bernstein, a regional administrator in South-Central Los Angeles--has received an official reprimand over his failure to act on reports coming from the school principal. Privately, school board members say they question whether the blame should have rested solely with Bernstein and add that “at least 10, maybe 15 people” knew of one or more of the allegations against Bartholome.

The case shifted last week to the courts. Bartholome was in the midst of his preliminary hearing, charged with 27 counts of child molestation and lewd behavior and one count of rape. Meanwhile, a grand jury was calling at least six school officials to testify to see if any should be indicted for failing to promptly report the Bartholome case to police.

The Los Angeles school board itself has hardly been blameless in the matter. In February, board members in a closed session approved the firing of Bartholome after school police confirmed a list of accusations, but the board also failed to probe deeply. It was only when Bartholome’s court hearing began, and the case got into local newspapers, that the board decided to take a further look at what happened.

Ron Apperson, the district’s legal adviser, interviewed the key people in the case and gave the board last Monday what Greenwood called a “good factual recitation of the case.” He added, however, “I don’t really know what was going on in people’s minds. We’re left with a lot of questions.”

Among those questions are these:

- Why was a teacher with a record of alleged child molestation at one school given custody of another third-grade class?

- Why was he put under the supervision of a principal in her first year on the job, whom district officials have described as “green and inexperienced?”

- Why, in the midst of the McMartin Pre-School molestation case, weren’t school officials especially alert to incidents of child abuse?

- Why didn’t the usual rumor mill at the school spread stories about Bartholome? Though several parents had complained about Bartholome, several teachers who taught with him say they were “totally shocked” to learn that he allegedly had molested children in his class.

- And finally and most important, why didn’t any of the school employees report what they knew “immediately” as required under California law?

While the legal case has moved into courts, school officials have been going over the record to see where they went wrong.

In 1982, when Bartholome was teaching at the 107th Street School, district headquarters received an anonymous letter accusing him of abusing children. Soon after, the principal received a parental complaint about him. In both incidents, according to district officials, the allegations were investigated and reported to police. The inquiry was dropped, however, when the parent withdrew her complaint and refused to testify against Bartholome.

Then, in what has proven to be one of the most controversial moves, the district decided in January, 1983, to transfer Bartholome to the 68th Street School.

“What else could we do?,” asked Rivera, the district spokesman. “There were no charges against him. He was a fully qualified teacher, and we couldn’t prove a thing against him.”

McDonald, who became a principal just one year before, “was informed why he was being sent there and was told to report any inappropriate behavior to the regional office,” Rivera said.

The sprawling Los Angeles school district has more than 700 school buildings and has divided its administration into eight regional units. According to district officials, the regional structure permits closer monitoring of the schools.

Parent Complains

In early December, McDonald received a complaint from a parent that her child had been molested in some way by Bartholome. Board members and top district officials have refused to say just what happened next, except that McDonald reported the accusations to the regional office, and that no concrete action was taken. The allegation was not reported to Los Angeles police.

Under a California law enacted in 1981, “Any child care custodian, medical practitioner, non-medical practitioner or employee of a child protective agency who had knowledge of or observes a child . . . who he or she knows or reasonably suspects has been the victim of child abuse shall report the incident to a child protective agency immediately by telephone and file a written report within 36 hours.” Failure to do so is a misdemeanor punishable by six months in jail or a $500 fine, or both.

On three more occasions in 1984--March 27, April 6 and Nov. 30--McDonald received further complaints about the teacher and forwarded them to the regional office. According to board members, she also interviewed students seeking to confirm the allegations and confronted Bartholome with the reports. But in each case, no action was taken and no report went to the police.

The final report, according to one board member, was “more graphic and explicit than the rest,” at last prompting regional administrators to call district headquarters and report the matter to police.

Other sources familiar with the investigation say Bartholome, in a rambling conversation with a school aide during this period, as much as admitted the allegations were true. The school employee reported the conversation to the principal, which finally gave credence to the children’s accusations.

Police Involvement

Lt. Vance Proctor, who heads the sexually exploited child unit, said his office first heard of the case on Dec. 21, 1984.

“I have double- and triple-checked it. We have no report of anything about him before then,” Proctor said.

He added, however, that his unit and the school district “have had a generally good relationship. They are usually quick to report these cases. This obviously appears to be an exception.”

“We get calls every day from the (school) nursing staffs,” Proctor said. He added, however, that “about 95% of the reports” allege abuse by a parent or guardian, not by a school employee.

Freeman, a prosecutor who has worked on other school-related cases, said, “There is a tendency for school people to hope and to believe what they hear about another teacher is not true. And that hope sometimes colors their judgment when they get complaints.”

“It’s not a question of a cover-up,” Freeman said. “It happens all the time that you tend to deny something you hear about a friend or a colleague.”

Beverly Carnell, another third-grade teacher at the 68th Street School, said she and other teachers never even heard the allegations against Bartholome.

“I was shocked when I saw a newspaper story about him. (Bartholome) seemed to be a very nice person, always friendly, and the kids seemed to like him very much,” said Carnell, who is also the union representative at the school. “My God, who would have thought something like that was going on. None of the children ever said anything about it.”

She described McDonald as “a wonderful person to work for. She’s very professional and she really cares about the students and the staff.”

Principal Defended

The principal could be demoted or fined for being slow to act on allegations, but Carnell defended her. “Maybe she didn’t hear all that much. I was a lot closer to him than she was, and I didn’t hear a thing,” she said.

The school board will finally decide who gets the blame for the Bartholome case, but that will wait until the district attorney has finished with any criminal actions against those involved.

Some board members suggest the blame may rest with a few individuals. Board member Roberta Weintraub said she is inclined “to hold the principal personally responsible. Good principals prowl the halls and know what’s going on in every classroom. Evidently this principal didn’t do that.”

Others like Gershman say that “mind-set of the school people” may be the ultimate culprit. And still others, like Rita Walters, newly elected board president, say school officials don’t have enough information yet to answer the key questions.

“It’s clear that something happened that shouldn’t have,” Walters said, “but we still don’t know why. I don’t understand how it happened, and I don’t think anyone really knows yet how it happened.”