How School Culture Shapes What Counts as Sexual Misconduct

• In Event: Research, Remedy, and Repair: An Administrator’s Guide to Preventing School Employee Sexual Misconduct

Abstract

Every organization has a culture, a set of assumptions, attitudes, and practices that influence how its members act. The culture of UPS drivers differs from that of lawyers in a litigation practice. A fashion design house and a McDonald’s franchise have different cultures. Although both health care and education are “people-serving,” their cultures The culture of schooling has many consequences. One consequence is that some schools are run to benefit teachers more than students. The culture encourages mutual support among employees, which is understandable but sometimes uncritically dysfunctional. Teachers want to respect their colleagues, they want to protect their colleagues, and they don’t want to “interfere.” In most circumstances, those attitudes advance the work of teaching and learning. But sexual misconduct is not “most circumstances”: it is extreme, and the ordinary culture of schooling, the regular business of schooling, is not a sufficient deterrent to crossing boundaries, grooming, and abuse.

This study is based upon the analysis of a sample of 132 civil cases of school employee sexual misconduct in which the author has served as an expert witness. Each of the 132 cases examined the same organizational components: (1) policies in place and followed; (2) training of staff, students, and parents; (3) practices for hiring and managing the employee; (4) reporting of the allegation; (5) investigating of the allegation; (6) supervision practices for both staff and students; (7) organization responses to red flags; and (8) remedying. The basic records typically include police incident reports, witness statements, and depositions from the victims, the alleged perpetrators, central office and building administrators, faculty colleagues, students, and parents.

Sexual Misconduct includes all sexualized behaviors from school employees directed at students, both criminal and noncriminal behaviors, that are sexualized and inappropriate in adult-student interactions. Sexual misconduct may be physical, verbal, or visual behaviors directed toward a student. In addition to sexual harassment and sexual abuse, other terms include boundary crossing and inappropriate behavior. Sexual misconduct may be physical contact such as full-body hugs or playing with a student’s hair or kissing or touching intimate body parts such as breasts, buttocks, or genitals or oral, anal, or vaginal sexual intercourse. Sexual misconduct is visual, such as sending nude pictures, sharing pornography, masturbation, or other sexual performative acts in person or through video/photos. Misconduct can be face-to-face or through technology to solicit, send, or share pictures and videos. Employees use cell phones, the internet, texts, Snapchat, and other digital platforms to groom and abuse students. Sexual misconduct is also verbal: sexualized language and sexual discussions in person and via email, Twitter (now X), Instagram, and other messaging platforms
The results provide both qualitative and quantitative data that describe the ways in which school employees who observe boundary crossing and inappropriate behaviors by school employees toward students redefine what they see as pro-social behaviors or “that’s just the way he is” actions. These employees, who could have intervened and reported, instead re-named the misconduct. The presentation will provide examples of the language and actions of those who saw and did not act.

Author

• Charol Shakeshaft, Virginia Commonwealth University