Heed Moral, Legal Call for Reporting Child Sexual Abuse

Santa Barbara, CA, November 16, 2011 --(PR.com)-- Calls for national mandatory reporting of child sexual abuse are being raised in the wake of sex abuse allegations engulfing Jerry Sandusky, former Penn State football coach and founder of The Second Mile, a non-profit serving children. Under intense scrutiny is how the report of abuse was handled once received by head coach Lou Paterno and university President Graham Spanier.

“A uniform national standard delineating who is legally obligated to report suspected or known child sexual abuse would be useful. It would create a legal obligation to do the right thing,” says attorney Mary Jo McGrath, a national authority on child sexual abuse awareness and investigation. “But beyond any existing or proposed legal duty, every person has the moral obligation to report what they know, have seen, or have reason to suspect, and to keep on speaking out until the threat to the student or child has ended. Delegating responsibility for reporting known or suspected child sexual abuse is never acceptable. Adults have a duty to protect children and they must take personal responsibility for doing so.”

In her 20-plus years of investigating adult-to-student sexual misconduct in educational settings, McGrath has encountered school administrators who hide suspected abuse because perpetrators have been winning coaches, popular teachers, or valued volunteers. Invariably, her investigations have revealed plenty of warning signs that inappropriate conduct was occurring. But colleagues failed to report what they knew or suspected to administrators, or administrators failed to conduct thorough investigations to get at the truth. Often, suspicions were never reported to law enforcement or child protective services.

“I have conducted sexual misconduct awareness and investigation trainings in hundreds of school districts,” McGrath said. “We discuss the green-, yellow- and red-flag behaviors that every school employee should be able to recognize. We discuss the victim profile and selection process: how perpetrators troll for vulnerable students, groom them to accept advances, and lull them into submission with threats and guilt. The Pennsylvania Grand Jury findings reflect all these behaviors.”

When school administrators do conduct investigations, they are often incomplete and inadequate, McGrath says. Poor quality administrative investigations have several commonalities including inadequate identification of witnesses and potential witnesses, unfocused, incomplete or neglected interviews and weak documentation leading to inconclusive findings.

“I cannot think of a more difficult administrative investigation than one into alleged sexual misconduct between an adult and a child entrusted to him or her,” McGrath says. “It requires special skills, a deliberate process and it relies on the cooperation of witnesses. But an investigation will never take place unless someone fulfills his or her moral and legal obligation to report what they saw or suspect to the proper authorities.”

Mary Jo McGrath has been an expert witness in educator sexual abuse allegations of national magnitude, including the Mary Kay Letourneau case. She served as Chair of the US Department of Education Safe, Disciplined and Drug-Free Schools Expert Panel from 2000 to 2002. Her training company, McGrath Training Systems, also produces the highly acclaimed educational video series for schools Sexual Harassment and Abuse: Minimize the Risk and The Early Faces of Violence: From Schoolyard Bullying and Ridicule to Sexual Harassment. McGrath Training has delivered workshops on topics ranging from sexual harassment and abuse awareness and investigation to employee supervision evaluation and leadership to more than 250,000 school administrators, teachers, staff, students, parents and community members.

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