Today's articles about the Jon White travesty are a follow-up to yesterday's "How Could This Happen" series.
First, Districts more careful about who comes in contact with children:
As for mandated reporting, Williams said, staff members "get information when they're hired, and then also at the beginning of the year."
Staff members must all sign a sheet stating that they understand they are mandated reporters. As well, he said, in the first in-service meeting of the school year, they get training on mandated reporting, another new element.
Training staff on mandated reporting is one way schools can make a difference in recognition and response to child sexual abuse, said Charol Shakeshaft, the author of a U.S. Department of Education-sponsored paper on educator sexual misconduct and an educational leadership professor at Virginia Commonwealth University.
"Training in this area needs to be done regularly," she said. "It needs to be done every year."
Second, Urbana getting bigger legal bills:
In invoices dated Feb. 15, 2007, and March 23, 2007 – just after White's charges were filed – the district received $24,928 in legal bills from Weedman's firm. In the previous two months, the district received $7,307 in legal bills from Weedman's firm.
The Urbana school board hired a separate firm, The Taylor Law Office in Effingham, specifically for the purpose of evaluating the district's response to concerns about White and to look at its policies.
Bills from the law firm – one from April 2007 and one from June 2007 – show the school district has already paid at least $42,804 for the external review.
Third, 2002 case strikingly similar to White case:
If the case of Jon White feels eerily familiar to some East Central Illinoisans, there's a good reason.
In 2002, Gerald Scott Huddleston, then a teacher at Chatsworth Elementary School in Livingston County, was charged with committing oral sex acts against young girls.
The circumstances of his acts read like a playbook that White – who attended nearby Illinois State University at the time – could have followed: bringing students to the classroom to help with cleaning, blindfolding students and having them perform a "tasting game."
Huddleston was convicted on three counts of predatory criminal sexual assault, and is now serving life in prison at Menard.
Discuss.