Molestation Case Renews Dialogue Over Teacher-Student Contacts

In 23 years of teaching kindergarten, Frank Weirath has doled out thousands of hugs to 6-year-olds as part of his professional recipe for teaching and nurturing.

But the arraignment Tuesday of a Santa Ana elementary schoolteacher on child molestation charges adds an extra twinge to the unsettled feeling Weirath and other teachers carry with them: Will a simple hug be seen as something else?

“I go across campus now and [former students] come up and hug,” said Weirath, who is on a two-year leave as president of the Capistrano Unified Education Assn. union. “You hug them back. It’s pretty hard not to do that. But it can be totally misconstrued.”

Despite concerns among educators about possible misinterpreted contacts with students, most school districts limit their guidelines to general policies barring physical intimacy or sexual harassment between staff and students. While some districts and the California Teachers Assn. hold seminars that touch on the subject, for the most part teachers must rely on their common sense, and on their faith that an innocent hug of support won’t end their careers or land them in jail.

“I tell them to never touch a child,” said Beverly Tucker, legal counsel for the state teachers group. “But that obviously is unrealistic. In the elementary grades there may be many occasions when you need to touch a child to ensure safety. You may have to pick a child up. There are hundreds of situations. So we advise teachers to be very cautious. You never know what a child will tell a parent, and what a parent will think happened.”

Although no one tracks the numbers of teachers accused or convicted of molestation, the concerns received fresh attention this week with the arrest of Jerome Thompson Wilhoit, 36, of Santa Ana. Wilhoit pleaded not guilty Tuesday to five counts of felony child molestation stemming from alleged improper touching of three students ages 7 to 9 in his combined second- and third-grade class at Wallace R. Davis Elementary School.

Police defend their arrest of Wilhoit, while teachers, parents and schoolchildren have rallied behind the first-year teacher, accused of patting one student on the buttocks and of what his lawyer described as giving a “raspberry on the tummy” of another student. The father of one of Wilhoit’s alleged victims told reporters that Wilhoit did not touch his daughter improperly. Wilhoit has been suspended without pay and remains jailed in lieu of $100,000 bail. A preliminary hearing is set for Wednesday.

Regardless of the merits of the case, educators said, the arrest casts a chill on all contacts between teachers and students.

“There’s a tremendous amount of fear,” Tucker said. “There have been some highly publicized cases [of arrests] of teachers who simply seem to have a touchy-feely style of teaching. It’s really discouraging to other teachers who know that teacher is a good teacher who really cares about the students, and who is falsely accused of having some sexual intent in touching a child.”

At Brea-Olinda Unified School District, teachers are warned when they are hired not to touch students, said Pete Boothroyd, assistant superintendent.

“It used to be, a few years ago, you would use a touch as a way of communicating with a kid,” Boothroyd said. “But unfortunately, the situation with our society has come to the point where you have to advise people not to touch the youngsters.”

The reality isn’t exactly that way, although teachers admit that they have gotten more cautious during the past few years.

Veteran second-grade Brea teacher Becky Cotton-Martin used to be generous with her bearhugs at Mariposa Elementary School. Now, she said, she usually goes for gentle pats on the back or a handshake.

“I think about everything before I act,” said Cotton-Martin, who has taught in the district for 34 years. “But that doesn’t stop me from caring.”

Hearty embraces are rare but not off limits.

“If a student is crying I’m going to pick him up and hold him,” she said.

Her work with the children Friday showed both modes.

As she looked over her young charges’ math work sheets, Cotton-Martin placed her hand on their shoulders and praised their work.

But at the end of the afternoon, several young students threw their arms around her waist to bid her goodbye for the weekend.

To Cotton-Martin, this is the natural way of children. But she and other teachers never know when someone will put an unnatural spin on it.

They know that allegations of molestation can change a teacher’s life, even if the teacher is never convicted of wrongdoing. School districts can still fire them; the state can strip them of their credentials.

“The school district is not bound by a finding of innocent,” Tucker said. “It can take two or three years to go through this entire process. For someone to be found innocent, then to be punished in spite of the finding, that is obviously devastating.”

Ten years ago, a Saddleback Valley Unified School District elementary teacher acquitted of molesting students at Olivewood Elementary School was fired anyway after the school board reviewed evidence not admitted at trial. The former teacher now works as a school computer technician in another county--dealing with machines instead of children. He declined a request for an interview.

In another case, a Fullerton elementary principal was demoted to a teaching position after a judge dismissed molestation charges against him, finding that he was simply changing the soiled undergarments of a 5-year-old girl. The school board, though, said his actions displayed unacceptable poor judgment. The principal quit and sued the district, later settling out of court for unspecified damages.

The Times is not identifying either man because of the sensitive nature of the old allegations.

In the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest with 680,000 students, teachers are warned against physical contact with students, but there is no set policy beyond general rules against sexual involvement.

“The basic rule of thumb is to keep your hands off the kids at all times unless you’re defending yourself or keeping the kids from hurting each other,” said Michael O’Sullivan, who trains teachers through the district’s Professional Development Collaborative.

Shayla Lever, director of the district’s Child Abuse Prevention Office, said blanket policies would have little effect. A policy won’t stop a child molester, and broad exceptions to a no-touching policy would render it worthless.

“We have teachers and staff persons who virtually have to change diapers of children,” Lever said. “Teachers have to break up fights. A kindergartner needs to have a hand held. To say ‘never touch’ is not realistic. What we try to do is sensitize the staff.”

The key, she said, is context. A kindergarten teacher putting an arm around a student’s shoulder differs in intent and perception from a high school teacher embracing a student in a frontal hug.

“There are hugs,” she said, “and there are hugs.”

Even future teachers who have yet to meet their first students are concerned. Louise Adler, acting chairwoman of Cal State Fullerton’s division of education and a former board member of the Saddleback Unified District, said questions about physical contact come up regularly in teacher education classes.

“If the instructor doesn’t bring it up, the students bring it up,” Adler said. “There’s concern, and also wanting hard-and-fast guidelines--which, of course, there aren’t.”