With the leaking of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion overturning Roe v Wade, some people have forgotten that there actually is other news, and this one really gets to me. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

A former Philly teacher sexually assaulted a student, and the district knew he was a predator, lawsuit says

A longtime teacher at Parkway Center City High School assaulted a student over four years at the school, despite warnings that the teacher had abused another student, a recently filed civil suit says.

by Kristen A Graham | Monday, May 2, 2022

A former Parkway Center City High School teacher sexually assaulted one of his students for four years — and the Philadelphia School District allowed it to happen, ignoring repeated evidence of abuse, according to a recently filed lawsuit.

Photo and caption from The Philadelphia Inquirer, August 30, 2019. Click to enlarge.

Larry Perry, a veteran, popular English and history teacher at the Philadelphia magnet school on North 13th Street, was already convicted of sexual assault and corruption of a minor in this case and sentenced in March up to eight years in prison. He is pursuing an appeal.

So, Mr Perry has already been convicted; this means that the lawsuit is over an established sexual abuse case.

The internally linked story noted that Mr Perry first began ‘grooming’ the girl when she was 13, and began to have sexual intercourse with her when she was 15. Doing the math from data in that story, Mr Perry was around 40 years old at the time. He was 51 at the time of his arrest.

Several paragraphs down:

Teachers who were friends with Perry knew about his relationship with the victim, the suit says, but did nothing despite being mandated reporters. A noontime aide once saw Perry driving the victim on I-95. A school police officer began noticing Perry spending significant amounts of time with the victim and brought his concerns to the school principal, who responded by bringing the police officer to a meeting with her and Perry.

If the allegation in the lawsuit is correct, teachers, plural, knew about the affair, but did nothing! It was a police officer assigned to the school who apparently did not know of the relationship — if the reporting is accurate — but was suspicious, and brought his “concerns” to the principal.

The principal told the school police officer that Perry “had been investigated previously regarding similar allegations, and that nothing happened to him.” The principal took no further action, the suit says.

The school had been warned about Perry before — in 1998, Perry’s then-girlfriend discovered him naked with another underage student at their home. She kicked him out of the apartment and reported the inappropriate contact to Parkway Center City officials, handing over letters and cards Perry wrote to the girl. Nothing was done with those allegations, the suit says.

The Inquirer article does not go into sufficient depth here. It could be that there was more than one previous investigation, which turned up nothing. That Mr Perry was caught in flagrante delicto with an underaged student, and that his then-girlfriend turned over physical evidence to the school, and he retained his job, is damning. This is an allegation which, if substantiated, should lead to serious investigations, terminations, and criminal charges against anyone who covered up Mr Perry’s abuse.

Mr Perry would have been 30 or 31 at the time, which leads to an obvious question: did he have tenure in 1998? If he did not, why was he retained? Even if the information brought against him at the time was insufficient to fire him, if he did not have tenure the school could simply have not continued his contract. If he raised a stink with his union, the cahool could simply inform the union of the allegations, and one would think that the union would not go to bat for him in such a situation.

Perry’s abuse of the plaintiff was so well known by other students that he “addressed the comments with students in his class and said that if the talk and rumors about him and Jane Doe do not stop, he will fail the students and they will not graduate,” according to the suit.

This is the most damning part of all: if this was true, then the ‘relationship’ was common knowledge. The John Jay Report documenting sexual abuse among the priesthood was released in 2004, and The Philadelphia Inquirer had been all over abuse stories. The titillating stories about Washington state teacher Mary Kay Letourneau and her affair with a 12-year-old boy were all over the news, both in 1998, when it first became public, and again in 2004 following her release from prison and marriage to Vili Fualaau, by then 21, the student with whom she had a ‘relationship.’ No teacher with an IQ above room temperature could not have known about the illegality of such ‘relationships,’ and the penalties for it. Teachers were all instructed about their reporting responsibilities for suspected abuse.

So, if the allegations in the lawsuit are accurate, who in Parkway Center City High School, and in the Philadelphia School District administration, knew about this and took no action?

If the allegations are substantiated, those who knew and did nothing or said nothing need to be fired! Any who have teaching certificates or professional licenses or certifications need to have them revoked. Under Chapter 63, §6319, the failure of a mandated reporter to keep something like this secret is guilty of either a felony in the third degree (sentence 3½ to 7 years in prison), if the mandated reporter has direct knowledge of the abuse, or a misdemeanor in the second degree (1 to 2 years in prison) if his knowledge is less certain.

The cited article stated that Mr Perry was “a veteran, popular” teacher, and it needs to be pointed out to everyone: we don’t care how much you like a person, if you know that he is sexually abusing minors, it is your duty to report it, and if you do not, you can go to jail as well.