Miller Releases New Report on Preventing Sexual Abuse in Schools, Calls for Hearings to Address Issue
WASHINGTON—Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), senior Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, today released a report that reviews national efforts to prevent sexual abuse of students by school personnel in public K-12 schools and called on Committee Chairman John Kline (R-Minn.) to hold hearings aimed at addressing the shortcomings of child abuse laws and regulations.
“Children have a right to be safe in schools and schools have a legal and moral obligation to fulfill that promise,” says Rep. Miller. “We must take every available and reasonable step we can to ensure that the people and schools that are entrusted with our children every day protect them from abuse. As this report shows, preventing abuse of children by school personnel remains a considerable challenge. We need to take action in the remaining months of this Congress to help protect students across the country.”
The report, titled “Federal Agencies Can Better Support State Efforts to Prevent and Respond to Sexual Abuse by School Personnel,” was requested by Rep. Miller and conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The report found that while federal law prohibits sexual abuse in federally funded education programs and sets minimum reporting standards, states and school districts differ significantly on how they handle issues of background checks for potential public school employees, awareness and prevention training, employee codes of conduct, and reporting of suspected abuse.
Furthermore, GAO discovered that many schools are unaware of their roles and responsibilities when it comes to preventing abuse. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 requires that schools have procedures in place to protect students from sexual violence by school personnel, but local officials often do not generally apply Title IX requirements to these cases, in some cases because they do not realize that they have an obligation to do so or choose not to fulfill that obligation.
“Schools have the responsibility to prevent sexual abuse under Title IX, but too many of them do not fully understand or comply with the existing requirements, leaving kids vulnerable to abuse and harassment,” says Miller. “Protecting kids from sexual abuse in schools is not a choice; it’s the law.”
To help address the issues raised in the report, GAO calls on the U.S. Departments of Education, Health and Human Services, and Justice—all of which hold some jurisdiction over cases of child sex abuse—to better collaborate and disseminate information about preventing sexual abuse to states and school districts and to better track the prevalence of sex abuse of students by school personnel. It also recommends that the Department of Education issue clearer guidance on how school districts must apply Title IX requirements to staff-to-student sexual misconduct and abuse.
Coinciding with the release of the report, which is part of an ongoing effort by Committee Democrats to address the issue of child sex abuse, Rep. Miller sent a letter to Chairman Kline seeking hearings to further explore the concerns raised by the GAO report.
“I first wrote to you in November 2011 and then again in June 2012 to request that we work together to gather our Committee members and hold hearings on a range of child sexual abuse issues,” Miller wrote. “More than two years have passed since that first request, and incidences of child sexual abuse at schools have not abated. While our bipartisan work together this past fall on House passage of critical child safety laws, including the E. Clay Shaw, Jr. Missing Children’s Assistance Reauthorization Act of 2013 and the Protecting Students from Sexual and Violent Predators Act background check bill, were victories on many levels, we need to accomplish much more to end such abuse.”
The Protecting Students from Sexual and Violent Predators Act of 2013 (H.R. 2083), which was introduced by Rep. Miller in May 2013 and passed by the House of Representatives in October 2013, would require consistent and thorough criminal history checks for all public school employees, applicants for employment, and contractors with unsupervised access to students. It would prohibit employment in public schools for any of those individuals if they have been convicted of violent or sexual felony offenses or any crime against children.
For more on the issue of student safety, click here.
To read the full GAO report, click here.
To read the full letter from Rep. Miller to Chairman Kline requesting hearings on child sex abuse, click here.
Next Article