Schools Let Sex Abuse Cases Slide

Amy Hsuan, Melissa Navas & Bill Graves:

The charismatic band teacher charmed students and parents alike. He won music competitions and teaching honors. He worked late, coached volleyball and mentored kids.

No one realized Joseph Billera, then 30, was having sex with children.

Yet there were warning signs for years that the popular Salem-Keizer teacher preyed on his Houck Middle School students.

School officials verbally reprimanded Billera after spotting him at a band contest in 2000 with a girl sitting on his lap, a blanket wrapped around them. In 2001, parent Robert Ogan complained to administrators after seeing Billera alone with a female student at a community softball game. Later, Ogan alerted the school's principal after knocking on the door of Billera's dark, locked band room one evening to be greeted by a middle school girl.

Three years passed before Billera was arrested and convicted for raping two students and molesting two others. Three of his victims were younger than 14. He assaulted one of them after the 2001 complaints.

Billera is one of 129 Oregon educators disciplined for molesting or having sexual relations with more than 215 public school children over the past 10 years.

Related editorial:

I t's hard to believe, but Oregon protects teachers who are sexually attracted to children young enough to play with stuffed animals. The state also goes easy on teachers who seduce vulnerable, needy teenagers.

In the wake of the scandals that rocked the Catholic Church, it's both immoral and willfully irresponsible to go on like this. Public school districts and state leaders should take swift steps to protect children from teachers who have no business remaining in any classroom.

Oregon takes a stunningly casual attitude toward sexual misconduct by teachers toward children, as The Oregonian's Amy Hsuan, Melissa Navas and Bill Graves reported this week. This is true both of allegations and of substantiated claims. The state is slow to investigate teachers, and districts are reluctant to remove teachers from classrooms -- or even to give known molesters a bad reference when they apply for their next job.

Most disturbing is the finding that districts will strike confidential settlement agreements with teachers who've admitted abuse. A teacher might promise to resign quietly (and not sue) in exchange for money, health insurance or positive job references.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at February 26, 2008 7:33 AM
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