"People who knew and did nothing must be held fully accountable for turning their backs on children to aid and abet predators." (As in MCPS Superintendents, Administrators and Board of Education members)

MD v. Dallas Dance: Statement in Support of Plea of Guilty

   Maryland v. Dallas Dance - Statement of Facts in Support of Guilty Plea by Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland on Scribd

***Former Baltimore County schools leader Dallas Dance pleads guilty to perjury

Former Baltimore County school superintendent Dallas Dance pleaded guilty Thursday to four counts of perjury for failing to disclose nearly $147,000 he earned from consulting jobs — including payments from a company he helped win a no-bid contract with the school system.

Prosecutors recommended a sentence of five years and want Dance to serve 18 months in jail. A sentencing hearing was scheduled for April 20, Dance’s 38th birthday.

Maryland State Prosecutor Emmet C. Davitt read a lengthy list of facts that laid out in detail how Dance repeatedly deceived the school board and ethics officials and manipulated the purchasing process to award a contract to a company that was paying him for consulting.

The facts show that Dance began negotiating for private consulting work with executives of the Chicago company, SUPES Academy, shortly after he was hired as Baltimore County schools superintendent in July 2012.

Dance told the executives that he needed to make more money due to a divorce, Davitt said in Baltimore County Circuit Court.

“Keep me as busy as you can,” Dance reportedly told one of the SUPES executives, Davitt said.

Davitt also said Dance vowed to a SUPES official that he would fire a Baltimore County Public Schools employee in order to get a no-bid contract for SUPES, which the school board approved in December 2012.

After his private consulting work with the school contractor became public in media reports, Dance lied to ethics officials about payments from his SUPES job and begged SUPES executives not to provide information to the ethics panel, Davitt said.

He also provided false documents to the school system’s ethics panel that showed any income he had earned was going to the school system’s education foundation. It was not, Davitt said.

Dance told SUPES executives not to worry because the ethics panel has no subpoena power. He also said that if they turned over any documents “he might as well kill himself.”...

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-county/bs-md-dallas-dance-trial-20180305-story.html

There currently is no criminal penalty for someone who has knowledge of child abuse and fails to report in the state of Maryland

The Parents' Coalition asked the Maryland Mandated Reporter Website if there were any criminal penalties for the failure of a mandated reporter to report knowledge of child abuse.  This means that the Montgomery County Board of Education and all MCPS administrators can have knowledge of child abuse and do nothing without fear of criminal penalties.  

Now you know why child abuse, including sexual abuse, of students can occur at such high rates in our public schools. The adults in charge of our schools are never, ever held accountable.  

-------------------------------

July 5, 2017

Thank you for your question submission on BCAC’s Mandated Reporter Website regarding failure to report penalties in Maryland.

While there currently is no criminal penalty for someone who has knowledge of child abuse and fails to report in the state of Maryland, you may be subject to professional sanctions by licensing boards depending on your profession. Additionally, according to Maryland Family Law 5-705.2, if an individual intentionally prevents or interferes with someone making a report of suspected abuse (i.e. attempting to obstruct a report), they can be found guilty of a misdemeanor and if convicted, be subject to up to 5 years in prison, or a fine of up to $10,000, or both.

...

Sincerely,

...

Baltimore Child Abuse Center
2300 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
410-396-6147
www.baltimorechildabusecenter.org

All the women claim administrators turned a blind eye to numerous complaints of abuse by students and teachers ... over a six-year period, and did nothing.

MORAGA, California -- A fifth alleged victim of former Moraga middle school teacher Daniel Witters has filed a claim against the small East Bay school district in a sex abuse scandal that has already resulted in legal settlements totaling more than $18 million.

The unidentified woman, who is seeking "$15 million or more" in damages, claims she was abused daily over two school years from 1990 to 1992 when she was 12 to 13 years old and in seventh and eighth grades at Joaquin Moraga Intermediate School. This is the fifth claim against the Moraga School District, which has already settled with four women who also claimed to have been abused by Witters. The teacher killed himself shortly after the accusations became public in the 1990s.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/breaking-news/ci_28859431/moraga-fifth-former-student-files-claim-district-sex

Advisory Group Member Tells BOE to Reject Policy as Written. Tells BOE to Reflect Upon the Words of Augustine of Hippo, "Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.”

Comments on proposed policy and protocols regarding child abuse and neglect.

6/7/15 Submitted to Montgomery County Board of Education

By: Jennifer Alvaro

Thank you in advance for your time and consideration in this matter. For 3 years I have been engaged with Montgomery County schools and officials to improve their prevention and response to child sexual abuse of its students. As a member of the original MCPS Child Abuse Work group (formed due to my advocacy in April of 2014); and as a member of the current Child Abuse Advisory group I would urge you NOT to implement the current policy as submitted to you by the schools.

The current version of the draft policy appears superficially to be a comprehensive response to the astounding trail of abuse committed over years by dozens of school system employees and contractors against our children. In reality the policy and regulations are so riddled by errors, loopholes and conflicting information they would be a step backwards instead of forward.

I will not waste time here enumerating the legal flaws in the policy or regulations, I would instead refer you to the excellent submission by Ellen Mugmon for that information.

Now is not the time to mince words or spare feelings. Mincing words, sparing feelings and ignoring reality have landed MCPS in the national spotlight for failing in every sense of the word to do what is right to protect our children from those who have roamed freely in our schools and have been allowed to harm them, their friends, their families, other staff and their communities.

This policy and these procedures, even if corrected regarding the legal aspects, will still only be words on paper unless you demand other action be taken as well. This plan is doomed to failure unless there is an infrastructure to implement, maintain and continue its mission. Parceling aspects of the work out among various departments and people (who have no expertise in this field) is planning for failure. This plan is doomed to failure as long as the system continues to operate in secrecy, not only from the public but from its own advisory group members as well. This plan in doomed unless other correlating documents / policies / departments / regulations are brought into line and into compliance with these policies. For example, how long will the board continue to allow MCPS to tell staff and students (regarding sexual harassment):

"Prohibited conduct may include, but is not limited to, unwelcome behavior of a sexual nature. For example: Grabbing, touching, or patting / Sexual propositions / Sexually offensive pictures, magazines, notes, calendars, cartoons, or jokes / Unwanted flirtations or advances / Verbal abuse / Repeated pressure or requests for sexual activities / Rewards for granting sexual favors or the withholding of rewards for refusing to grant sexual favors /Graphic comments about an individual’s body or dress / Sexually degrading names / Such conduct may also constitute sexual harassment. In determining whether prohibited conduct constitutes sexual harassment, consideration will be given to the totality of the circumstances, including the context in which the conduct occurred. Dating or sexual relationships between employees/adult volunteers and students is prohibited.”
http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/info/sexualharassment/

Shockingly, students and staff are advised to report the aforementioned behaviors NOT to police or Child Protective Services but rather to school staff and parents. This breach of duty has been brought repeatedly to the attention of your staff over the past year and yet, to this day, remains unedited on your website. When will an employee code of conduct be published? Codes of conduct for staff and volunteers are a critical piece of any response to addressing child abuse & neglect. Why is participation in the drafting of the code being hidden from Advisory group members and limited to
“internal stakeholders” / “superintendent’s cabinet”?

These are some of many examples which could be provided to highlight the egregious nature of what is acceptable, condoned and allowed to continue under the guise of protecting our children.

I ask you to demand a full, impartial investigation be conducted (with a public report and accounting) regarding the systemic failure of the schools to protect our children and staff from these abuses over the past decades.

I ask you to reject this policy as currently written and if and when corrected, continue to reject it without reviewing and approving the procedures, regulations, MOUs and other corresponding components (specifically the secret database of suspicious and inappropriate employees and those on restricted plans / instructions) related to this critical work. I ask you to commit to the protection of our children and staff. I ask you to reflect upon the words of Augustine of Hippo, "Right is right even if no one is doing it; wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it.”

Sincerely,

Jennifer Alvaro
MCPS Child Abuse Advisory Group Member 
Parent of 2 MCPS Students 
Alumni of MCPS Schools 
Licensed Clinical Social worker (MD &VA) 
Certified Sex Offender Treatment Provider

Comments on Proposed Policy and Protocols Regarding Child Abuse and Neglect by Parents' Coalition of Montgomery County, Maryland

FYI to BOE: Abuse thrives in secrecy – in 2012 the Maryland State Board of Ed directed you to take concrete steps to protect children in schools. Your response was silence.

Dear Montgomery County Board of Education Members:

Abuse thrives in secrecy – in 2012 the Maryland State Board of Ed directed you to take concrete steps to protect children in schools. Your response was silence.
In September of 2014, MCPS, under the direction of Dr. Joshua Starr, began to respond to media attention to “isolated” incidents of child sexual abuse at Baker and Clemente. Since then, dozens of cases have been publicized that had previously been mishandled. We all know now that these incidents are not isolated. There is a systemic problem in MCPS and there should be accountability for the travesties committed against children in our schools.
As a parent volunteer on this workgroup/advisory group, there has been selective transparency – we are still awaiting documents that we have requested on numerous occasions, and the website has been slow to be updated, if at all. And while we were participating in workgroup/advisory group meetings with multidisciplinary team members, children continued to be abused in our schools.
Please do not vote to implement this draft policy yet. I have grave concerns that doing something without having this policy vetted by child abuse experts with knowledge of laws and Attorney General opinions at the state level will be a huge mistake. I believe there are major flaws in this policy, major loopholes, conflicts with Attorney General Opinions, and inconsistencies with Maryland law.
Additionally...

open letter to Montgomery County Board of Education continues at this link.

This report is the only comprehensive account of a half-century of abuse and coverup at the Horace Mann School.

On June 6, 2012, when the decades long history of sexual abuse of students at the Horace Mann School was revealed in a New York Times Magazine cover story, the response both inside and outside the school community was unalloyed shock. Questions swirled as new allegations of
abuse emerged in the weeks and months after publication. As the number of alleged abusers rose
to the double digits it became clear that what had happened at Horace Mann was orders of
magnitude beyond the abhorrent occurrence of an individual teacher imposing sexual activity
on a student.
What happened at Horace Mann represents the largest concentration of abusers at a single
institution. Such things do not happen by chance, and the situation at Horace Mann was
enabled by a culture of arrogance and secrecy, aided by individual acts of cowardice and denial
by administrators, board members, and teachers. Thus enabled, abuse was a
llowed to thrive for
decades. This institutional dynamic the tacit collusion of abuser and administrator to keep
things under wraps must be understood, and eliminated, in order to keep our children safe.
There is no safety in secrecy, whether it is at the behest of an administrator, a board member or an abuser. Secrecy aids abusers, harms victims and creates more victims, each one preventable...

 http://makingschoolsafe.com/the-report/

WUSA9: Child sex offenders in Montgomery County Public Schools

 http://www.wusa9.com/story/news/local/2015/02/24/montgomery-county-schools-child-sexual-abuse/23937507/

Police report shows school district stonewalled detective investigating molestation allegations

MORAGA -- As allegations swirled that a popular science teacher had sexually abused students in the Moraga school district nearly two decades ago, a town police detective sought to investigate the complaints, but said school officials thwarted her efforts, this newspaper has learned.
Detective Julie Valdez built a case against teacher Daniel Witters despite efforts by school administrators to limit her access to information about his conduct, according to the report she filed in 1996. That portion of the probe derailed after Witters killed himself days after the abuse claims surfaced. However, Valdez turned her focus to his superiors.
She concluded in her report that at least three school district employees broke the law requiring them to report sexual abuse claims to authorities, a failure that allowed additional abuse to occur. It is not clear why charges against the employees were not pursued.

 http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_23992234/moraga-police-report-shows-district-stonewalled-detective-investigating

Teacher in WPost Article had been put on "Restrictions" 4 years before Rape of Student

The teacher that is discussed in today's Washington Post piece was also put on "restrictions" four years before he was arrested for the rape of a 14 year old student.

Is putting teachers on "restriction" something that Superintendents learn when they attend national education conventions?  It's time for parents to know how many teachers are on "restrictions" today in our public schools.

Rambold had been warned by school officials in 2004 to avoid touching or being alone with female students.

Read more: http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/former-senior-high-teacher-gets-days-for-rape-of-student/article_b1f84190-ef23-5868-8799-b779c0421dc1.html#ixzz2dYRKtd9i