The young girl said an adult volunteer touched her buttocks in a way that made her feel weird and uncomfortable. The incident happened in the hallways of Shaftsbury Elementary School in January as students collected personal belongings to leave for an after school program.
The school principal Jeff Johnson and counselor Kathy Zemianek investigated the situation and did not to report it to the Department for Children and Families.
Under state law, teachers and school officials are “mandatory reporters” of allegations of abuse.
At a packed school board meeting this past week, Mike Foley, a parent, argued that administrators did not follow established protocols when they conducted an internal investigation instead of notifying state authorities.
“When the superintendent says there is a policy in place since 2001 – that leaves room for this to happen again – the school and its employees are not supposed to be investigators,” Foley said.
Instead, Foley said, they talked to the child for an hour in a half and “the child is then put in a position where she says well, maybe nothing happened after all.”
In a timeline written by the principal documenting the questioning that went on after the incident, the child described it as an “accident” and not “intentional” but also “weird” and that it made her “uncomfortable.”
The parents of the girl and some community members contend that school officials should have reported the incident to DCF right away and not have pursued their own investigation.
Beth Sausville, the Bennington director for DCF told the parents of the girl, “As you are aware, there is some personal judgement involved with regard to reporting incidents of child abuse and neglect but DCF always advises our mandated reporters “when in doubt, report.”
The Southwest Vermont Supervisory Union’s Child Abuse and Neglect policy 5005 states that school employees are not supposed to investigate.
“It is not their role to be the investigator, judge, and jury in cases of suspected abuse or neglect. Rather, it is the role of school district employees to be faithful and timely reporters of suspected abuse or neglect so that allegations can be brought to the attention of objective, trained, and experienced investigators,” the policy states.
In addition, the policy says an employee doesn’t have to be convinced that abuse or neglect happened “only that it might have occurred.”
School board member David Durfee said it may be the policy as written can’t be followed to the letter. “As a lay person, as someone who wasn’t involved in this situation, if I were looking at the policy and then brought up to speed on what I understand took place, then I would say the policy wasn’t followed to the letter,” Durfee.
Board Chair Francis Kinney replied, “That policy doesn’t really apply for this incident but that is the only policy we have.”
“My reading is that it would apply,” said Durfee.
In a letter to the family, James R. Culkeen, superintendent of SVSU, apologized. But he agreed with Johnson’s decision not to report the event to DCF saying that “his investigation and that of the Act 1 trainer in his building did not come to that conclusion.”
Johnson and Kinney both apologized to the family. Culkeen promised to increase the Act 1 training of staff across the supervisory union.
Act 1 is a 2012 law meant to improve the state’s sexual abuse response system that puts the onus on school boards to make sure adults employed in the schools get an orientation, information and instruction on how to identify and report child sexual abuse.
Another board member, Jeff Leake, said he wants to find out how Act 1 is being implemented. “That is one thing we haven’t heard yet. It needs to be brought to the top of the list.”
