EDITORIAL: Sex charges tarnish teacher profession

Child sexual abuse cases have been reported up to 80,000 a year in the U.S., according to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

Studies show children who are the victims of prolonged sexual abuse develop low self-esteem. They can become withdrawn and mistrust others. They face depression, nightmares, aggressiveness and can even become suicidal.

The abusers in these cases run the gamut from strangers to neighbors.

But they can also come from some of the most trusted people in a child’s life - their own teachers.

A simple Google search shows just how widespread the issue of teachers having inappropriate relationships with students has become.

Most of us remember the name Mary Kay Letourneau, the teacher that made national headlines in the 1990s for having a relationship with her then-12-year-old student.

Within the past week alone, there have been charges filed against teachers from Shamokin, Pa. to Montgomery, Ala., Dallas to Delaware and West Virginia to New Jersey for having sexual relationships with their students.

In recent weeks, The Star has shown that these cases, sadly, are not uncommon even here in Cleveland County.

Who remembers “Coach Ron”? Ronald Keith Bailey, now 75, was a longtime assistant baseball coach in Cleveland County. That was until 2007, when numerous accusers came forward with claims of sexual abuse. Bailey is now serving a life sentence in the North Carolina prison system for several of those crimes that date back to the early 1990s.

Then there was Nicole Willis Chapman, a North Shelby School teacher who had a relationship with a student at the school in 2010. Chapman was later convicted on those charges and sent to prison.

And now, two more Cleveland County instructors - Caron Elizabeth Blanton, a former Burns Middle School science teacher, and Edward Miller, a former Springmore Elementary music teacher - face their own criminal investigations regarding relationships with minors.

Blanton and Miller have not had their day in court. But the allegations against them lead credence to what appears to be an ever growing trend of teachers being caught for abusing their position and forgetting the moral code that should come with the job.

But we’re not so naive to believe this is a recent trend. Perhaps the trend of getting caught is new, or of making the print and TV headlines.

We don’t know how to solve this problem. This is a deep-rooted issue that goes far beyond school policies or even state and federal laws. But we hope our school systems, both locally and nationally, are putting their own safeguards in place to ensure more students can focus on their school work in the classroom without one day being a witness for the state in a court of law.