Response to Harry Pringle Bangor Daily News Letter
Bernie Huebner
Dear Editors:
I am pleased to be able to agree with a proponent of the fingerprinting
law, if only on what I view as a partial alternative to it. At least Harry
Pringle (letter, 3/7/00) sees that "The real solution to the problem is
much broader. We must relax the extremely stringent confidentiality
restrictions which apply to school employee records, so that kids can be
protected." Would that other supporters of the current law could look
beyond it as he does.
But, with all due respect, Pringle's case for continuing to push to
fingerprint and run FBI checks on all school personnel, like the Department
of Education's case, while at first sounding persuasive, begins to crumble
under rational scrutiny.
Pringle, a lawyer and likely a good one, says that he "can now no longer
count the number of times I have been involved in representing school
districts in terminating employees for inappropriate sexual or physical
contact with students. My best guess--and it is only that--is that the
number is well over 50." But, as he discloses earlier, this is 50+ over
"more than 25 years," or around two cases per year. Elsewhere he tells us
that "the vast majority" of these cases involved "long-term employees."
Put aside the troubling realization that these offenders do not appear to
have been prosecuted, rather only swept out of sight with Pringle's help so
there are likely no criminal records to find.
But as opponents of the law keep saying: do the math. If the vast
majority--40, say--involved long-term employees whose records would
therefore already be local knowledge, fingerprinting and FBI checks would
seem to have been of little value. The remaining 10 cases spread out over
25 years, even if they all had convictions, which it appears they did not,
gives you only 2/5th of a case of a prior conviction per year that might
later be turned up. A veritable impending epidemic of offenses. Oops,
make that POTENTIAL offenses.
Pringle then cites three of what I assume are his most persuasive cases:
a bus driver and a teacher guilty of sexual crimes involving minors, and an
employee convicted of smuggling drugs into a penitentiary and posessession
of a firearm by a felon. At least these have criminal records. But what
they have in common is that all three cases seem again to involve long-term
employees (the first two had been employed, he says, "for a number of
years," and the smuggler had a 1986 conviction which only recently came to
light). While these records, if from out of state, could be found through
fingerprinting and FBI checks, the crimes would also appear to be outside
the five-year "lookback" provision of the current law which results in
automatic revocation of certificate or license by the DOE. Beyond five
years, action may or may not be taken at the discretion of the
Commissioner. And so the question arises: what is actually being
accomplished by possibly firing people with old convictions followed by
apparently long clean records? Does this really prevent abuse, or just
look that way?
Let's get serious about child abuse. Stop witchhunting school personnel
to almost no actual protective effect on children. Instead devote the
energy and millions of dollars to investigating and stopping the THOUSANDS
of cases of child abuse going on throughout Maine communities each year,
over 85% of it in the child's own home, and for which the Legislature does
not give the Department of Human Services the resources even to look into.
Bernie Huebner,
Waterville