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	Justice Must Throw Book at Sexual Predators Montreal Gazette May 26, 2008 http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/editorial/story.html?id=c25a38dc-4568-4fc4-9b37-f2022acaff2b CANADA — In Toronto this week, a teacher accused of sexually assaulting a student 26 years ago turned himself in to Toronto police. Robert Judge, 58, has been charged with indecently assaulting a 15-year-old girl in 1982 when he taught at Etobicoke Collegiate Institute. In Lennoxville, Bishop's College School is facing a class-action suit filed by 11 former students alleging sexual abuse by an Anglican minister, the late Harold Theodore Gibson Forster, between 1953 and 1962 when Forster was teacher, chaplain, choir director and house master at the school. In Montreal, Selwyn House School, a private boys' school, was rocked by news that Virginia police had arrested one of its elementary-school teachers, Richard Doucet, charging him with possessing child pornography and of soliciting over the Internet a 13-year-old boy, who in reality was a police officer. These cases are still before the courts, and it is impossible to know how large the problem of sexual predators in schools is, but there is, definitely, a problem. A 2001-2005 investigation in the U.S. last year by Associated Press found more than 2,500 cases of teachers who were either sanctioned by their schools or, in half the cases, convicted of a crime of sexual misconduct. If the size of the problem is hard to determine, trying to find a solution to child molesters in schools is even more difficult. There is no foolproof way of knowing whether a teacher might abuse students - unless that teacher has a prior criminal record for sexual misconduct. In the U.S., some states have taken the step of requiring that simple allegations of sexual misconduct be sent to teacher licensing bodies, AP reported. The news agency added, however, that inconsistent enforcement of the requirement means information is incomplete. In Canada, victims of predatory teachers use the phrase "pass the trash" to describe the phenomenon of schools quietly allowing teachers to move on to new schools after allegations of abuse are made. The same phrase has been used in both countries in cases of sexual abuse by clergy. But two new developments seem to be paving the way to ridding schools of predators successfully: For one thing, victims are coming forward with allegations, some dating back decades; for another, the Internet is providing a trail that police and other investigators can follow. Prosecutors can more easily build cases with physical proof such as text messages, emails and pornographic images and films. The seriousness of child sexual abuse cannot be overstated. Victims talk of lives ruined. They are unable to work, form relationships, enjoy friendships or accomplish what they hoped to in life. The justice system seems to be the one realistic hope of putting an end to a predator's career. We should make sure it has the funding it needs to carry out work that schools and licensing bodies cannot or do not want to undertake.
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