Teachers Molesting Students...

No "RED FLAGS" went off in his mind!

I just read another story yesterday that infuriated me to no end. It came after a few other “teacher predator” stories I heard this week. James Hooker, 41, has moved in with his 18 year old “former student,” Jordan Powers, and left his wife and children. One of his children is just a year younger than Jordan. Jordan’s mother is extremely irate, as you would expect. She believes that their relationship started long before her daughter reached the age of 18 this past September. Jordan’s mother has found 8,000 text messages, very long late night phone calls and emails, all when Jordan was a minor. She feels Hooker seduced her daughter over a period of time. Jordan was 14 and a freshman in high school when she met Hooker, her teacher. Once Jordan turned 18, she moved in with the man she says is not only her lover, but her best friend. Location: Modesto, California, but it could have happened anywhere. 

The number of incidents of teachers molesting students seems to be on the rise and yet I hear very little being done to protect children and prevent these things from happening. Our country, as whole, always seems to be focusing it’s time and energy on the wrong things. Where are our sense of priorities? It seems to me, with the devastating number of cases of teachers abusing students being reported, and God knows how many go unreported, that steps would be taken by all school systems to do some damage control. They need to re-evaluate the way things are being done. Check their screening process before hiring. How are the background checks on these predators being done? Are teachers being transferred to other schools if an incident is reported and the schools are too lazy to investigate? What about putting security cameras in all the classrooms? How about a program that teaches children how to recognize inappropriate behavior and to tell someone if they have been approached by a teacher in any way that makes them uncomfortable? I heard some talk here in NYC by the schools chancellor that they want to train all teachers so they can be aware of signs and spot a predator in their own schools. That is a step in the right direction. 

We send our children to school to learn. It’s supposed to be a protected and safe environment for them. But, instead, they are being subjected to all kinds of dangers. They can have child molesters for teachers, their classmates might be relentless bullies, a mentally disturbed child might bring a gun to school and killed them in a senseless, random shooting. When I was a kid we never heard of these things happening. Granted that was a quite a few years ago, but these changes are drastic and I have to ask myself why? And until we get the answers to “why” these things are happening with more frequency, we need to take action to prevent them from happening at all. We send our children to schools for an education and to better their future, NOT to be victims and certainly not to have their lives ruined. It’s really an outrage the extent to which things have gone.

I can’t blame Jordan’s mother for being sick with disgust at the man who took advantage of her daughter. He robbed her of her innocence, of her childhood, of her adolescence maybe even of her future dreams. Her mother is having law enforcement look into the fact as to whether or not this relationship began while Jordan was a minor. If so, maybe criminal charges can be filed against Hooker and he can be sent to jail. Maybe they can find other students he has had to come forward? I sure hope that is the case before Jordan gets pregnant and realizes she made the biggest mistake of her young life. She is another tragic statistic of degenerates working in the school system.