BUFFALO (NY)
The Buffalo News
January 7, 2018
By Dan Herbeck
Three former administrators from Nichols School were criticized in an investigators’ report for failing to take action against teachers involved in sexual misconduct or inappropriate relationships with their students.
If the administrators worked in public school systems, New York state laws would have required them to report such allegations immediately to law enforcement.
But because of a loophole in state law, there is no such requirement for administrators at private schools like Nichols.
“For a public school administrator, it’s a crime not to report it. For a private school administrator, there’s no law against failing to report it,” said Stephen P. Forrester, director of government relations for the not-for-profit New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. “There is a huge loophole in state law, and it’s long overdue to fix it.”
Forrester and his organization are working with legislators on a proposed state law that would put the same requirements on private school administrators. One of the proposed law’s big supporters is Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn.
Thousands of children who attend private schools throughout the state deserve the same protections as children in public schools, Flynn said.
“This is an issue that I have thought about since I first took office,” Flynn said. “It’s absolutely wrong, and I absolutely support changes in the law.”
Flynn’s comments came one day after Nichols released a report detailing its investigation into 10 teachers who had improper relationships with students over more than four decades. Nichols hired a Washington law firm to investigate last May after receiving a letter from Elizabeth Russ Mohr, a 1994 Nichols graduate who reported having a romantic and sexual relationship with her physics teacher at the school. Mohr was 17 at the time of the affair, and the teacher, Arthur Budington, was 48.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.