Sexual abuse in schools

School-related sex abuse cases are all over the news lately. Multiple female Florida teachers have been accused of having sexual relationships with students. A custodian in a Louisiana school has been accused of sexually assaulting two 10 year-old boys, and two more alleged victims have come forward since his arrest. A music teacher at a Chicago high school has been charged with multiple counts of sexual abuse. An Arizona teacher has been charged with two counts of sexual misconduct against a female high-school student. In NY, a male tacher's aide has been accused of takign a five-year-old student and sexually assaulting her. A three-year-old special-needs student was assaulted by a bus driver- officials say DNA evidece matchign the driver was recovered from the student's underwear. A MD elementary school vice-principal has been charged with sexually abusing a six-year-old boy. A sixth grade teacher in NC has been charged with taking indecent liberties with a minor. his two victims were not students at the school where he taught, but he tutored them in his home. These are all cases that have been in the news in 2008, and I haven't included cases where students are victimized by other students. I'm also confident that there are many other victims of abuse in school who did not come forward.

I have seen parents criticized harshly for leaving a child in a locked car while they go pay for their gas, because someone just might kidnap the child, or the gas pump might explode. None of these things are impossible, but the risk of a stranger kidnapping a child is very low. It seems to me the risk of a child being sexually abused in a public school, while relatively low, is very real and at least as high as the risk of being kidnapped, possibly much higher. A woman in Illinois was arrested late last year and charged for leaving her sleeping two-year old in a locked car while she took her other children to dump change in a Salvation Army kettle. She was never more than 10 yards away from her vehicle. Although the charges were later dropped, a lot of people obviously thought her actions were wrong, because "something" might have happened to the child. How, then, can society expect parents to send their children to a public school, knowing that there is a risk of sexual abuse? Are parents who send their children to school negligent?