Columbus
Dispatch, Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Some
schools keep records private
Nonpublic schools have no legal
duty to make teachers' files available to the state, parents or other districts
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
3:28 AM
By Jill
Riepenhoff and Jennifer Smith Richards
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
2005-06 yearbook photo
Dwayne Smith
State education investigators have
had their eye on Worthington Christian High School teacher Dwayne Smith for a
decade.
They don't remember why they flagged him.
The paper trail that explains Smith's path to the
state Office of Professional Conduct is gone. Ohio law requires the office to
purge documents related to undisciplined teachers after two years.
Now, only a handful of people associated with
Worthington Christian Schools know the details of what happened in 1996 when he
was accused of fondling a middle-school girl. Smith did not respond to requests
for comment.
There's no requirement for the schools to refresh
the state's memory.
Private and religious schools are supposed to play
by the same rules as public schools when a teacher is accused of wrongdoing,
but not all do -- largely because they don't have to.
Private-school personnel records are shielded by
law from the public -- even from the state Education Department, which licenses
teachers, coaches and administrators at most of Ohio's private schools.
After private-school teachers clear the hurdles of
criminal background checks, the Education Department has no right to their
information, and neither does the next school down their career path.
Unlike most public-school teachers, whose licenses
are periodically renewed, private educators never have to return to the state.
From the time they are issued, private-school licenses never expire, giving the
state little reason to ask questions.
"It's a system that really sets kids
up," said Judi Welsh, a former counselor at Worthington Christian High
School. "It's not about erring on the side of caution."
Worthington Christian school leaders said they did
everything right when accusations surfaced against Smith in 1996. They reported
the case to Franklin County Children Services and sent Smith to Christian
counseling. Smith resigned. He never was charged with a crime.
School officials don't apologize for hiring him
back two years later.
"We think Dwayne is a great teacher, a great
coach. He's an outstanding person to have here," said the school's
attorney, Daniel R. Swetnam. "We didn't want to arbitrarily throw someone
under the bus."
The loyalty to Smith among Worthington Christian
school leaders troubled Welsh so much that she quit her job there last year.
"I needed to know beyond a shadow of a doubt
that there was protocol in place to effectively handle these situations,"
she said.
Welsh, who was hired at her alma mater in 2003,
found notes written by a former counselor that detailed an interview with an
eighth-grade student. The girl occasionally stayed with Smith and his wife when
her mom was out of town.
The counselor's notes say that Smith approached
the girl at night.
"I would act like I was asleep. He would undo
my bra, fondle my breasts, kiss all over my face," the counselor wrote,
apparently quoting the girl's comments.
Smith's sin was so serious that he quit. It was
serious enough that he publicly apologized to the congregation at Grace
Brethren, the church affiliated with the school.
Welsh remembered the day in 1996 when Smith asked
the Grace Brethren congregation for forgiveness but did not explain what he had
done.
Two years later, high-school Principal Tom Anglea
and then-Superintendent Taylor Smith -- Dwayne Smith's father -- rehired him.
Smith had undergone the Christian
"restoration" process that included confession, counseling and
forgiveness.
"There's no dispute that Dwayne acknowledged
and confessed his sins," Swetnam said. "We recognize that all of us
are sinners. We're not going to just throw him or anyone else overboard."
But when Welsh was hired five years later, she
started asking questions about Smith. Why was he coaching girls track? Why did
he have girls helping in his classroom?
"Dwayne came and found me," Welsh said.
"He answered all my questions. He acknowledged that, yes, it happened
multiple times over a three- to four-week period. He said, 'She had been coming
on to me for a while.' "
The girl, now grown, did not want to revisit the
incidents in detail other than to say that she felt betrayed by the school and
by Smith, who at the time was a family friend.
"I sat in front of a whole group of (school)
people and told them what happened," the woman said. (The Dispatch
does not name sexual-abuse victims unless they agree to it.) "I was so
embarrassed, I left the school."
Welsh asked school leaders to keep a closer eye on
Smith and to craft a policy on how to handle allegations of misconduct. She
asked for a meeting.
When they met in March 2006, Welsh recorded the conversation
and, nearly a year later, provided a copy to The Dispatch. Worthington
Christian officials confirmed the meeting and reiterated the points made on the
recording."We understand that if something happens between Dwayne and a
student, we will be big-time liable," executive pastor Jim Augspurger said
on the recording.
"That's a risk we take. I think before God we
did the right thing and it may not be the worldly, may not even be the most
prudent thing, but it is something we have done," he said. "We've
wiped the slate clean. I understand the situation it puts us in."
Welsh was stunned by the school's dismissive
attitude about Smith's past and the unwillingness to limit his contact with
female students.
"I got tired of hearing, 'Judi, these are
godly men. How can you accuse a godly man?'" Welsh said.
Another counselor, Buzz Inboden, echoed Welsh's
concerns and appealed to school officials to take action.
"They have confused forgiveness and
restoration with pretending that once there is confession and forgiveness, that
offenders should be treated as if nothing had ever happened," Inboden
wrote to Augspurger in 2006. Welsh provided a copy of the letter to The
Dispatch. "The problem for the church is not the victim. The problem
for the church is the potential future victims."
Inboden now says he's comfortable that there are
proper checks and balances in place for Smith.
But Welsh said they weren't there when she worked
at Worthington Christian. Her conscience wouldn't allow her to continue her
job.
She went public with the story because she wants
the culture to change. She wants parents to know that abuse happens.
"It's not confined to public schools in a bad
part of town. In private, Catholic, Christian schools … people make bad
choices," she said. "Parents need to be vigilant with their
children."
Especially at private schools, where by law the
state can't pry.