Teachers Learn To Touch Only Minds Cda Instructors Likely To Get Guidelines This Fall

It’s tough for teachers when one of their own is accused of sexually abusing a student.

They’re outraged if the allegation is true - and outraged if it’s not. They’re confused and uncomfortable until guilt or innocence is proved, which may never happen.

In Coeur d’Alene, their attention is focused on Paul Mather. The 49-year-old teacher and coach faces charges of child sexual abuse after being accused of fondling 13- and 14-year-old girls.

“We’re still reeling from the trauma,” said Gretta Shay, president of the Coeur d’Alene Education Association. “I’ve got teachers worried about Paul. I’ve got teachers worried about the girls. How do we deal with this?”

Male teachers, especially, worry that an innocent gesture might cost them their careers or land them in jail.

“It’s certainly something that’s on my mind,” said Doug Porter, a Coeur d’Alene school psychologist.

“I’m working with students, and they’re in definite need of some comfort,” he said. “I’m not going to touch them, even though I’d like to. I’m not going to put my hand on their shoulder and say, ‘That’s OK.’ And that’s unfortunate.”

The uneasiness peaks whenever there is an accusation, Porter said.

Few school districts escape these crises. They’ve cropped up recently in Kellogg and in Moses Lake, Deer Park, Spokane and Chewelah, Wash.

In Mather’s case, his defense is that he is a caring person whose affection has been misinterpreted.

“He hugs his players; he hugs his students. He doesn’t hug them if they tell him they don’t want that,” said attorney John Rumel, who represented Mather during the school district’s investigation.

While the criminal case continues, the district must decide whether to fire Mather. If it does, the state Department of Education likely will take away his teaching certificate.

Jerry Painter of the Washington Education Association has represented many teachers accused of sexual abuse over the past 20 years.

Half of those who are found guilty don’t belong around kids, he said.

“But a good 50 percent of them maybe even more - just haven’t received the training. They just don’t know what the new limits are; they just don’t know what makes people uncomfortable.”

Teachers may get conflicting advice on whether they can touch students. Or they may get no advice.

There has been no districtwide training on the subject of touching and related issues for the Coeur d’Alene public school staff.

“I guarantee you there’s going to be some kind of in-service (training) this fall,” said Shay, the teachers union official.

And in her president’s address on the first day of school, she said, “I’m probably going to tell them, ‘Don’t hug,’ for legal reasons.”

But she ignores that advice in her own elementary school classroom. “If a kid wants a hug, I give them a hug.”

That’s only natural, said Russ Hubbard, who teaches would-be teachers at Eastern Washington University. “Once when I was in a fourth-grade classroom, I had a boy so hungry for physical touch that he clamped onto my leg.”

Hubbard tells his students to trust their own sense of comfort.

“But be real careful about the reaction you get from the other person. Try to never do anything that would be misconstrued by a parent or student as a sexual come-on.”

The WEA’s Painter, who gives seminars on the subject, offers guidelines based on seeing how people get in trouble.

“I tell teachers that we expect a lot of touching in kindergarten through third grade. But starting with second semester, fourth-grade girls - especially if you’re male - we recommend your touch be limited to the ‘universal good touch.”’

That’s a touch on the shoulders or on the back between the shoulders.

If teachers hug students, they should make sure they treat boys and girls the same. Otherwise, he said, they’re being sexist.

“I don’t think school districts have really done a good job in training people on appropriate touch,” Painter said. “Too many people are getting afraid to touch, and I don’t think that’s right.”

Some Washington school districts require teachers to attend Painter’s seminars. That’s not the case in Spokane, but the two he has given there in the past two years have been well-attended.

“Sometimes, not all the right people come - the ones you’d like to see come,” said Lynn Jones, president of the Spokane Education Association.

Teachers hate the bad rap that sexual abuse cases give their profession, Jones said.

But, he added, “I’m beginning to wonder if the problem isn’t underreported and not dealt with enough by society in general, with our old code of accepting lapses in professional conduct.”

By now, he said, teachers and coaches should know how to conduct themselves professionally. “You don’t go into a room with a girl or two girls and shut the door,” he said. “You don’t drive a girl home after a game after dark.”

In a four-year national study of 225 cases partly paid for by the U.S. Department of Education, 96 percent of the abusers were men. Nearly three-fourths of them had abused females.

The Idaho Professional Standards Commission has taken action against only three female teachers accused of sexual abuse in the past seven years.

Society tends to look differently at cases in which an older student is involved, especially one who appears mature and sophisticated.

But professional rules of ethics are clear: no sexual relations between teachers and students.

“As adults, we have a responsibility to children. Even if someone is 17, there’s still a lot of innocence there,” said Porter, the Coeur d’Alene school psychologist.

“In spite of what the media would suggest and in spite of what a person would look like and how they behave, children still need our protection.”

It’s gut-wrenching for teachers to discover a colleague is guilty of sexual abuse, said Phyllis Edmundson, dean of EWU’s College of Education.

“Some of the most serious abusers are people who are just not mentally healthy and do not value and respect other people. They’re often very good at presenting a facade that’s very different than they behave.”

Good teacher training never will be enough to weed out such people, she said.

“Yes, there are bad apples,” said Hubbard, the EWU professor. “But there is an incredibly rich supermarket that those apples come from.”

, DataTimes