A shocking number of American K-12 educators have been charged with child sex crimes in the first half of 2022 alone.
According to an analysis conducted by Fox News Digital, at least 181 have been arrested between Jan. 1 and June 30, amounting to an average of exactly one arrest per day.
This report comes amidst Republican and conservative efforts to combat political and ideological “grooming” in schools.
The term “grooming” is typically used to refer to inappropriate instruction in schools regarding sexual orientation and so-called “gender identity.”
In Fox News Digital’s analysis, the 181 educators charged included four principals, 153 teachers, 12 teachers’ aides and 12 substitute teachers.
At least 181 K-12 educators charged with child sex crimes in first half of 2022 https://t.co/jBVgh0O6Xm
— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 20, 2022
The Department of Education last investigated this issue in 2004.
Should this issue be investigated further?
In a report published that year, the department found that 9.6 percent of students in grades 8 to 11 self-reported being the victim of educator sexual misconduct.
A harsh critic of “grooming” in schools, journalist Christopher Rufo, gave a statement regarding the analysis. “This is a scandal that the political left is doing everything in its power to suppress,” Rufo told Fox News Digital.
“The basic fact is incontrovertible: Every day, a public school teacher is arrested, indicted or convicted for child sex abuse. And yet, the teachers unions, the public school bureaucracies and the left-wing media pretend that the abuse isn’t happening and viciously attack families who raise concerns.”
“It’s time to take this problem seriously,” he said. “I call on Congress to appropriate $25 million for a national study of child sex abuse in public schools, so victims can finally get justice and parents can have greater confidence that schools will be safe for their children.”
Last month, the Department of Education released a report titled “Study of State Policies to Prohibit Aiding and Abetting Sexual Misconduct in Schools.”
According to Fox News Digital, the report “analyzed state policies prohibiting ‘passing the trash,’ or allowing suspected sexual abusers to quietly leave their jobs to possibly offend again in a different school district.”
The report found that only 19 states “have laws or policies requiring employees to request information” from an applicant’s current and/or former employers.
Additionally, only 14 states require job applicants to provide written permission for current and former employers to release information related to the applicant’s employee records.
Therefore, suspected child abusers who were never formally charged could slip through the cracks.
Republican Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, who has proposed legislation that would prohibit schools from “passing the trash,” was “deeply concerned” by the findings.
“While I appreciate that the Department of Education has finally fulfilled its obligation to investigate whether states have implemented policies, laws or regulations to stop the heinous practice of ‘passing the trash,’ I am deeply concerned with these findings,” Toomey said.
“Any educator who engaged in sexual misconduct with a child should be barred from ever teaching in a classroom again, yet too many states do not have policies to ensure that is the case. Releasing this report is only the first step — the department must hold states accountable and use the tools at its disposal to enforce the law.”
