A major child sex abuse scandal has erupted in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Where's the national media?
- Steve Thomas Rooney faces 13 felony sex-related counts, including charges that he had unlawful sex with two female students, ages 13 and 14, during the time he was an assistant principal at a middle school. And here's the kicker: In August 2007 LAUSD assigned Rooney to his job even though it knew that police had investigated him about an alleged sexual relationship with a student at his previous job at a high school. The former high school girl has since testified that Rooney impregnated her. (LAT coverage)
- KNX 1070 Newsradio has reported "21 teachers and administrators have been yanked from schools in the past year because of allegations of inappropriate sexual contact with kids." Most of the cases happened since only January of this year.
- Two LAUSD administrators face criminal charges for failing to report suspected child abuse by a substitute teacher. Yet LAUSD has sent the pair back to work at school! (LAT)
- During interviews, LAUSD Superintendent David Brewer has often come across utterly uninformed on the scandal. (Listen to this must-hear KNX audio.)
- When LAUSD Deputy Superintendent Ramon Cortines was questioned over the phone about the scandal by KNX reporter Charles Feldman, Cortines became agitated and hung up on Feldman. (Hear the audio.) In discussing the scandal with KNBC-TV in Los Angeles, Cortines defiantly responded, "This is not out of the ordinary for school districts all over the nation. These things happen."
"These things happen"?!? Hold on. LAUSD has been through this before. In 1986, an LAUSD teacher was sentenced to 44 years in prison on 30 counts that he molested 13 students at 68th Street Elementary in South Los Angeles. Even after years of complaints about the teacher, officials had failed to report the suspected molestations to Los Angeles police. In 1990, the District paid a multi-million dollar lawsuit as a result of the case. (HT: Must-read by LAT's Sandy Banks. Also: Read about the case here, here, here, and here.)
Where's the national media on this current scandal? By comparison, look at how the media has covered decades-old allegations of sexual abuse by clergy of the Catholic Church. Since 2002, the coverage has been voluminous and incessant. (The Boston Globe alone ran a mind-blowing 989 articles related to the scandal in the 2002 calendar year.) Years later, the media still takes joy in hammering the Church, even with misinformation and falsehoods (as we've chronicled here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).
When it comes to the abuse of children, it sure seems like the national media doesn't get too worked up unless the words "Cardinal," "bishop," or "priest" is in someone's job title.
Imagine the media uproar if a Cardinal or bishop had dismissively responded, "These things happen," when asked about child sexual abuse in his organization. You can also bet that if it were the Catholic Church, the media would be angrily demanding the names and locations of those 21 teachers and administrators.
Double standard? Absolutely.
—Dave Pierre is the creator of TheMediaReport.com and a contributor to NewsBusters.
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This is not out of the
May 19, 2008 - 08:41 ET by motherbeltThis is not out of the ordinary for school districts all over the nation. -Superintendent Cortines
So teachers having sex with students has become so "ordinary" that it's not news?
You can bet that even if it were a lay teacher in a Catholic school, this would be a national story.
Ironic thing is one of our
May 19, 2008 - 08:41 ET by taterIronic thing is one of our priests said in a homily a month or so ago if you compare the sex scandals by priest to teachers...teachers vastly outnumber them.
Now that's probably because there are way more teachers than priests out there but then again which group has more impression on children.
"They need to have a course in college called common sense and everyone should take it. Problem is there isn't too many people that could pass or teach it." -my grandfather
So the clergy is better at
May 19, 2008 - 09:01 ET by Dan The Man 2So the clergy is better at covering up than teh teachers are?
Nuke em til they glow then shoot em in the dark.
Appalling!
May 19, 2008 - 08:35 ET by MeanderingNo kidding, the media isn't covering this at all? Doesn't sound like them not to cover something that might damage its liberal agenda in an election year. Surely you must be mistaken. Its ridiculous and appalling. What kind of teachers are they hiring out there in LA? Just another reason not to live there, my opinion.
The simple
May 19, 2008 - 08:36 ET by taterThe simple answer
priests, bishops, cardinals = an institution dealing with God
teachers and public school = an insitution that is being brainwashed by liberal values
"They need to have a course in college called common sense and everyone should take it. Problem is there isn't too many people that could pass or teach it." -my grandfather
Public "education"
May 19, 2008 - 08:59 ET by iveseenitallThis kind of thing has been going on in public schools for decades. It's just getting worse because America has been avoiding dealing with the disaster that is its public educational system. Poor teachers have now become worse than that, poor administrators have looked the other way and now are participating in this outrageous behavior. Education in America is a national disgrace. It won't improve just because we pay teachers and administrators more money. It will only improve by getting rid of incompetence and raising standards, as well as punishing child abusers. We've ignored this problem far too long.
NEVER,NEVER trust a "liberal"
If we pay the teachers more
May 19, 2008 - 09:02 ET by Dan The Man 2If we pay the teachers more then this wouldnt happen. That announcement was for candace.
Nuke em til they glow then shoot em in the dark.
That's it exactly!
May 19, 2008 - 09:07 ET by Ole_SargeOnly Liberals can abuse our children with impunity!
A recognized "authority figure" like a Roman Catholic Priest, it is the highest form of abuse, and tear apart the churches because they are evil!
But funny, the priests that did abuse children while a priest and then defrocked and are now big time liberal celebrities, it's okay.
Same with our schools. So long as it was an "approved" type of abuse it is okay. Sex with underaged children, what's the problem?
Yes and sadly nothing new.
May 19, 2008 - 11:27 ET by Ten7sYes and sadly nothing new. The left has always used homosexuality against its opponents while being absolutely packed full of it in their ranks. Communists and Socialists commonly use/d the threat of 'outing' (or even potential prosecution depending on the law) as blackmail to obtain all sorts of politcal objectives. For instance, many of the most promenent Nazis were homos, but the Nazis sent tens of thousands of Communitsts to prison and death camps for being homos. To the Neo-Marxists (aka Hard Left, New Left), deviant sexual behavior (and related "gay rights" movement) is just a tool to harm their opponents (e.g. Christians, Pro-Lifers, Pro-Family supporters, etc.).
This is probably also going
May 19, 2008 - 09:11 ET by taterThis is probably also going to be my soapbox on the larger issue at hand...this could be traced back to integrating pornography into the mainstream, the hypersexualized media, or the fact that it's so easily available on the internet. It leads to this deviant sexual behavior.
"They need to have a course in college called common sense and everyone should take it. Problem is there isn't too many people that could pass or teach it." -my grandfather
Simple
May 19, 2008 - 09:11 ET by richflanjThe public schools are the liberal secularists' equivilent of the church. In their worldview, they cannot, must not, EVER be exposed as imperfect. To do so would assault, and possibly destroy the primary means they have to indoctrinate (NOT educate) children. That applies to anything that might expose imperfection: teacher standards, student testing, etc.
An amoral media, an amoral
May 19, 2008 - 09:48 ET by mattmAn amoral media, an amoral school system; what else can we expect? The priest scandal was fodder for the media because it gave them a chance justify their own perversion by pointing out the apparent hypocrisy of their arch nemesis. Unfortunately for them the hypocrisy of others is no excuse.
BTW - Is 'Prom' short for 'promiscuity'?
I haven't heard anything
May 19, 2008 - 10:03 ET by mjgI haven't heard anything about this from the liberal media. But I agree if it had anything to do with the Catholic Church it would be in the media for days and months.
Sex scandals in the schools
May 19, 2008 - 10:29 ET by iveseenitallThe public doesn't know the half of it. I've witnessed it. Thank you for covering it up, "liberal" media.
NEVER,NEVER trust a "liberal"
home school
May 19, 2008 - 10:22 ET by amberYes, but, our children MUST attend these schools so officials can be sure they are safe. After all, the majority of people who home school their children do it because they really want to be free to abuse them without the public's knowledge.
Sorry, gotta go slip some food under the closet door for the kids.
Double Standard
May 19, 2008 - 21:22 ET by HaileTsadaWe've recently seen how the authorities handle sex abuse of minors by church officials in Texas. In Texas the mere allegation of abuse by an anonymous caller brought out swat teams with automatic weapons and the children were separated from their mothers.
This story in Texas has been major fodder for the media since it happened. However, though more minors have been abused in L.A. schools, and not just mere allegations in this case, the media has been reticent to publish it.
The difference being that the children in L.A. were mostly minorities beset by minorities. As this nation likes to tolerate multiculturism, the media must give these teachers and their supervisors a pass.
Shrek
May 19, 2008 - 21:25 ET by dmntd1I know I've been out of HS almost 20 years, but the biggest thing that kept my fellow students away from sex with teachers is that Shrek would have run from most of them!
Fascism is a religious conception in which man is seen in his imminent relationship with a superior law and with an objective will that transcends the particular individual - Mussolini