Rise in Student Abuse Claims Has Teachers Fearful and Frustrated

Walking through the Memorial Junior High schoolyard last May, Harry Franson was confronted with the kind of situation that can suddenly present itself to any teacher, any day.

A female colleague, unable to control a student, asked Franson to escort the girl to the school’s security office. Taking hold of the student, the 42-year-old gym teacher began to walk her away. But as she struggled to break free of Franson’s grasp, both lost their balance and tumbled to the ground, Franson recalled.

Within hours, Franson was informed by a school police officer that he probably would be accused of abusing the girl. A week later, the San Diego Unified School District offered him a choice: Resign or face criminal charges of battery and cruelty to a child--and the loss of his teaching credential if convicted.

“When he first told me, . . . I thought it was a joke,” Franson said last week, a year after the charges were brought. “Because all I did was come to the aid of a fellow worker, and all I did was hold the girl by the arm when she took a swing at me.”

Such child-abuse accusations against teachers are apparently on the rise in San Diego and across the country, posing a new hazard that can devastate the careers even of teachers who are cleared of wrongdoing, according to teachers, lawyers and union officials.

Like Franson, teachers may find themselves facing criminal charges that arise as they carry out their legally mandated responsibilities as substitute parents during school hours.

“How many people do you know of who have a criminal exposure for doing their job?” John Meyer, Franson’s lawyer, asked.

Prosecutors decided to press charges based on witness accounts to police that Franson had twisted the girl’s arm behind her back and forced her to the ground, then pulled her back up and continued to twist her arm. Franson and Meyer claim that that is not true and that witnesses supporting Franson’s version of events were not interviewed before the charges were filed.

Franson, who said this was the first abuse charge in his 16-year career, was exonerated after a four-day jury trial and reinstated to a new school. But besides a summer of “misery,” Franson spent $7,000 in legal fees and more for psychotherapy.

Franson’s teachers union reimbursed him for the legal fees when he was cleared of the charges.

Even if they are cleared of criminal charges, teachers may still face administrative proceedings by their districts aimed at firing them or rescinding their teaching credentials. Although lawyers can help them over both kinds of legal hurdles, no one can remove the taint of the accusation or shore up their reputations in the eyes of superiors, other teachers and students.

“I was found not guilty, but people don’t know it,” said Franson, who was transferred to Wangenheim Junior High. “The word they get is I was out beating hell out of this little girl.”

Not everyone sympathizes with Franson’s plight.

City and school-district lawyers said they believe the claims lodged by police and students.

“Just because something doesn’t rise to the level of criminal conduct doesn’t mean it’s the kind of conduct we want our employees to be engaged in,” said Tina Dyer, general counsel for the school district.

Penny Castleman, San Diego, deputy district attorney in charge of misdemeanor child-abuse cases, said cases like Franson’s are most often lost because they are difficult to prove, not because the charges are false.

“I have to prove that the teacher was acting beyond the scope of what the parent would do,” she said.

True or false, teachers and union officials predict that increasing abuse accusations will chill students’ relationships with teachers. Even some district administrators are counseling against the well-intentioned slap on the back and the casual, caring arm across the shoulders.

A Colorado teachers union has issued guidelines to its members advising limited physical contact with students. And teachers in Waukegan, Ill., were advised recently by their school superintendent not to touch students in any way after one teacher was convicted and another indicted on charges of sexual abuse.

The California Teachers Assn. has in recent years stepped up seminars showing teachers how to avoid situations that could result in an abuse accusation.

“We teach them to be paranoid,” said Gordon Bittle, communications consultant for the teachers union.

With child-abuse complaints looming, “Who is going to break up the fights?,” Meyer asks. “Who is going to restrain the kids?”

Franson made that decision long ago.

“If a teacher is attacked on campus, I go this way and I call the administrators,” he said, pointing toward the door. “If two kids are fighting, I don’t bother them. I go this way. And we’re going to have a good lawsuit someday.”

Although physical and sexual abuse by teachers still is considered rare, unions and school officials throughout the country agree that the number of accusations has increased markedly in recent years. The trend coincides with increased reports of child abuse by family members and others.

In the past eight years, the National Education Assn., which represents about 1.65 million teachers in the country, has registered a 15% to 20% increase in insurance payments made to reimburse teachers exonerated of such charges, Ohman said.

Michael Rothschild, who defends teachers accused of abuse in the Sacramento area, said he has seen a 50% to 100% increase in the number of such cases in the past few years.

In 1985, the San Diego Teachers Assn. referred 14 people to Meyer for consultation about an abuse accusation. In 1984, the union made eight such referrals. In 1983 and 1982, there were none.

“I see more reporting in the last few years,” Dyer said.

Experts say society’s heightened awareness of sexual abuse is the primary reason for the increase in reports. Prominently displayed news coverage of incidents such as the McMartin preschool case, television shows, and seminars for children and adults have created a climate that encourages students to tell someone if they think they have been abused.

Few deny that is an improvement over days when children’s claims were ignored, but some lawyers say that a few kids have learned to take advantage of the system.

“Kids have become very manipulative,” Meyer said. “Kids have become aware of the fact that it’s a very powerful issue.”

Rothschild said, “There are founded cases. The phenomenon can and does happen, tragically. In my opinion, there’s a substantial number that are not.”

Lawyers, teachers and union officials say California teachers are suffering most from a 1985 change in the state’s law governing reports of suspected abuse. School officials failing to report suspicions of abuse to authorities now face misdemeanor charges.

The result, critics say, is that principals who once weighed their opinion of the child and teacher involved against the claim--and investigated accusations themselves--now turn everything over to their superiors or the police.

“Now, it goes to the police; whereas before it would have been handled at the school district level,” Rothschild said. “Now, the discretion has been removed. . . . When in doubt, they must report, no matter how spurious (the claim).”

Los Angeles school administrator Stuart Bernstein faces trial May 13 on misdemeanor charges in connection with delays in reporting child-abuse allegations against teacher Terry E. Bartholome, accused of a variety of molestation charges against students.

“When a principal sees his colleagues being accused of failure to report a suspicion of child abuse and the possible ramifications of failure to report, they get understandably nervous and don’t want that same situation to happen to them,” said Shayla Lever, director of the Los Angeles Unified district’s child-abuse office.

Castleman, the deputy city attorney, believes the children claiming abuse.

“I don’t buy that this is the McMartin mood and one false move and they’ve got you,” she said. “Maybe it’s because I see so much stuff.”

Castleman, who was not in charge of the department when Franson was charged, said reviews of Franson’s case and a similar case brought last year against Fletcher Elementary School teacher Valarie Davidson convinced her that they should have been brought to trial.

Davidson, accused last January of using excessive force to control one mentally retarded student and yanking another by the hair, was reported to the principal by three cafeteria workers who witnessed the first incident. She was cleared by a jury last summer.

But Castleman thinks the jury was wrong.

“Three different cafeteria workers were so upset by what they saw that they went to the principal,” she said. “The principal had had numerous complaints against her.”

Castleman, who has handled five abuse claims against teachers in the past six years, said she gives such cases special consideration, personally interviewing witnesses who already have been questioned by police. In two of the cases, Castleman rejected police charges of abuse, and she lost two others--the Franson and Davidson cases. In the fifth case, a teacher pleaded no contest.

“I know that just issuing the charge can have a stigma,” she said. “Because of that, I do investigate it more thoroughly. I wouldn’t issue (charges) against a teacher just on a police report.”

Ernie McCray, the principal at Fletcher who brought Davidson’s case to district authorities, said the reporting law did not influence his decision to turn her in. Davidson had been counseled previously on a similar complaint, and this time McCray believed she was guilty.

“I believe the people who saw it,” McCray said. “They didn’t have anything particularly against her to create a lie.”

Davidson vehemently denies that and still lives with the effects of the accusation. She says friends and colleagues avoid her. Teachers at her new school, Revere Development Center, told her, “We didn’t really want you here,” she said.

“Our field is very small,” Davidson said. “People who are known to be with other people, well, where there’s smoke there’s fire. There are still some people who are sure that the charges are true.”

Lincoln High School physical education teacher Raymond Hooper is in the same situation, but the charges against him were for sexual abuse.

On March, 19, 1985, a student accused Hooper of fondling her in the gymnasium office. Another student reported that he had taken her to an off-campus apartment three months earlier and attempted the same thing.

After a lengthy investigation, which included a lie-detector test that Hooper passed, city police recommended that charges be filed against him. In May, both the district attorney and city attorney declined to prosecute. But they recommended he be dismissed.

Later that month, Hooper was suspended without pay pending dismissal.

Hooper fought the charges before the Commission on Professional Competence and won on Dec. 23. He was reinstated to Lincoln in January but still has not been given back his $5,500 football coaching position and is fighting the district over back pay and legal fees.

His family suffered along with him.

“How do you tell your son why you’re not coaching?” he asked.

When Hooper arrived at school to take up teaching again, he found one of his accusers in his badminton class. She quickly was removed.

“What happens to children who make unfounded allegations?” Hooper asked. “The young lady makes a false allegation, . . . and the young lady is still in school and still in my class.”

Hooper fears most for his future. “I am viewed with suspicion. Among the coaching fraternity, I am blackballed. I cannot get a job. I don’t think I could get a recommendation from anyone. I’m done. I’m just done.”

Dyer, the district’s general counsel, said Hooper should have been fired.

“Even now, I still would have done (that),” she said. “I interviewed the girls. I believed them.”

Convinced that their colleagues are not prepared for the trials they have lived through, Hooper, Franson and Davidson have asked the teachers union to allow them to offer seminars to other teachers on the ramifications of a child-abuse accusation.

The three met while working at the district’s Instructional Media Center, where teachers taken out of the classroom are often placed.

“It just takes one kid that says, ‘So-and-so put his hands on me,’ ” Franson said. “I hope that someday none of (them) have to go through what Ray Hooper, what Val Davidson, what I went through. Because it was hell.”