Pass the Trash: The Silent Epidemic Schools Hid for Decades

HS Class of ‘94: Almost zero headlines like this. Now it’s weekly poison.

I graduated high school in 1994. Know how many teacher-student sex scandals made the news that year in my district? Zero. In my state? Maybe one, buried on page six. Nationwide? You’d have to dig through microfiche to find them.

Fast-forward thirty years, and I can’t scroll through my news feed without tripping over another arrest. Missouri substitute teacher: ten years for trading students drugs and cash for sex, some as young as middle school. Her husband threatened victims with a baseball bat when they tried to speak up. UK teacher Kandice Barber telling her 15-year-old student “you have a bigger penis than my husband” after having sex with him in a field.¹

What the fuck happened?

Here’s the thing that’ll make your blood boil: Nothing happened. Nothing new, anyway.

The Lie We Were Sold

We want to believe this is a modern plague, that something broke in our schools around 2010, that social media created a generation of boundary-crossing predators, that we’re living through an unprecedented crisis.

We’re not.

Between 1991 and 2000, peak “simpler times” nostalgia, 290,000 students experienced physical sexual abuse by public school employees.² That’s not a typo. A quarter-million kids. While we were passing notes and playing Oregon Trail, nearly 30,000 students per year were being molested by the adults paid to protect them.

But here’s why you don’t remember the headlines: Only 6% of students reported what happened to them. The other 94% stayed silent, scared, ashamed, or correctly sensing that no one would believe them over Mr. Johnson, the beloved basketball coach.

The abuse isn’t new. The reckoning is.

The Numbers Don’t Lie (But Schools Did)

One in ten students, roughly 10-12%, will experience some form of educator sexual misconduct by the time they graduate.³ Not might. Will. That’s three kids in every classroom of thirty.

And before you think “misconduct” means an off-color joke, let’s be clear about what we’re talking about: Sexual comments, sure; but also touching, kissing, oral sex, intercourse.⁴ The Shakeshaft Report, the most comprehensive federal study on this nightmare, found that nearly 10% of public school students had been victims of sexual harassment, rape, or abuse by educators.⁵

The trend line? Between the 2015-16 and 2017-18 school years alone, sexual violence reports jumped 43%. Rape and attempted rape? Up 74%.⁶

Is that because teachers suddenly became monsters? No. It’s because kids finally have cell phones to document evidence, because #MeToo taught a generation that their “no” matters, because we stopped reflexively calling teenage girls liars when they accused men in positions of power.

The Predator Profile: Your Kid’s Favorite Teacher

Most perpetrators, 89%, are male. Most are teachers (63%) or coaches and gym teachers (20%).⁷ They’re not the creepy janitor from an 80s PSA. They’re charismatic. Popular. The teacher who stays late to help struggling students. The coach who “really cares” about the team.

They groom with gifts, food, money, jewelry, special attention, and 29% of students disclosed recognizing this grooming behavior, even if they didn’t report the abuse itself.⁸ Kids know something’s wrong. They nickname these teachers “creepy” or “perv.” But when a 14-year-old’s gut screams danger and every adult around her is praising Coach Mike for his “dedication,” who are they going to believe?

The abuse follows a pattern: It happens on school property: in classrooms, offices, hallways; or in the educator’s home, their car, secluded outdoor areas.⁹ About 75% of offenders now use technology, texts, Snapchat, Instagram DMs to initiate and maintain the relationship.¹⁰

The majority of victims, 72% in fact, are girls.¹¹ But let’s not pretend boys are safe. Male victims face their own hell: the cultural narrative that they should be grateful, that it’s not “real” abuse if they got a boner, that they’re less masculine for being victimized.

This isn’t “Hot for Teacher.” It’s child rape with a side of tenure.

Pass the Trash: The System That Protects Predators

Here’s where it gets darker.

When schools catch a teacher, and that’s a big “when,” given that fellow employees who know about abuse report it only 5% of the time¹², they don’t fire them. They don’t press charges. They offer a deal: resign quietly, we’ll give you a neutral reference, everyone moves on.

It’s called “passing the trash,” and research funded by the U.S. Department of Justice found that the average predator passes through three different school districts before being stopped.¹³ During that school-hopping tour, they can abuse as many as 73 students.¹⁴

In Charol Shakeshaft’s landmark study of 225 cases, all the accused admitted to sexual abuse, every single one. But none were reported to authorities. Only 1% lost their teaching license. Thirty-nine percent simply left for another district, most with glowing recommendations.¹⁵

Why? Because school districts care more about avoiding lawsuits and bad press than protecting children. Superintendents broker confidential separation agreements, here’s a severance package, a promise not to sue us, and in exchange we’ll tell your next employer you “pursued other opportunities.” The predator gets a fresh hunting ground. The victims get betrayed twice: once by their abuser, once by the institution that chose reputation over justice.

As of 2024, only 18 states plus D.C. have passed laws to prevent “passing the trash.”¹⁶ Thirty-two states still allow it. Your kid’s molester could be teaching in the next county over, right now, because his previous district wanted to avoid the scandal.

The Human Wreckage

The kids who survive this don’t just “move on.” They report trouble sleeping, loss of appetite, negative feelings about themselves, loss of confidence, fear.¹⁷ About a quarter see their grades tank, get into more trouble with authorities, develop problems with peers.

But the long-term damage? That’s the real kick in the teeth. Depression. Anxiety. Inability to trust authority figures. Difficulty forming healthy relationships. PTSD. And because 82.9% of reported misconduct happens in high school, with another 13.6% in middle school,¹⁸ we’re talking about abuse during the most formative years of identity development.

These aren’t just statistics. They’re your neighbor’s daughter who developed an eating disorder sophomore year. Your nephew who started cutting himself after football season. The quiet kid who dropped out junior year and no one knew why.

And while they’re drowning, only 4% report the abuse.¹⁹ The other 96% carry it alone.

The Manifesto: What Actually Fixes This

Enough with the hand-wringing. Here’s what we do:

1. Federal “No Resignation Without Investigation” Law

Make it a felony for school administrators to broker secret separation agreements when sexual misconduct is alleged. If there’s an accusation, there’s an investigation, period. No golden parachutes. No neutral references. The teacher can resign after the investigation clears them, not before.

2. Mandatory National Database

Right now, states voluntarily report disciplinary actions to NASDTEC, a tracking system. Voluntary. As in, “please and thank you, if you feel like it.” Make it mandatory and public. Every school district in America should be able to see if a prospective hire has been investigated, disciplined, or fired for misconduct anywhere in the country. And make that database accessible to parents, because sunshine is a hell of a disinfectant.

3. Social Media Background Checks for All Hires

Three out of four offenders use technology to groom victims.²⁰ Check their social media before you hand them a classroom key. If they’re posting about “mature for her age” teenagers or have a history of inappropriate boundary violations online, that’s a red flag the size of a billboard.

4. Mandatory Student Education on Grooming

Twenty-nine percent of students recognized grooming behaviors like special attention; 12% recognized gift-giving.²¹ Kids see the warning signs, they just don’t know they’re warning signs. Teach them. Age-appropriate curriculum, starting in elementary school: what appropriate teacher behavior looks like, what crosses the line, and how to report it. Empower kids to trust their instincts.

5. Bystander Intervention Training for Staff

Only 5% of staff who know about abuse report it.²² That’s not because 95% of teachers are monsters, it’s because they’re scared of being wrong, of ruining a colleague’s career over a misunderstanding, of getting sued for defamation. Give them legal protections for good-faith reporting. Train them to recognize red flags. And make it clear: if you see something and say nothing, you’re complicit.

6. Zero Tolerance for Boundary Violations

Stop treating grooming behaviors as “personality quirks.” The teacher who texts students at 11 PM about non-school topics? That’s a violation. The coach who insists on closed-door one-on-ones? Violation. The instructor who gives a student a ride home alone? Violation. Create bright-line rules and enforce them before the behavior escalates to abuse.

The Broader Betrayal

This isn’t just about predators. It’s about a system that chose comfort over children for decades. School boards that prioritized budgets over background checks. Administrators who valued their reputations more than their students’ safety. Teachers’ unions that protected bad actors in the name of due process. Parents who looked the other way because Coach Mike won state championships.

We promised kids safe spaces. We delivered hunting grounds.

The Missouri substitute teacher case, Carissa Jane Smith, drugs and money for sex with middle schoolers isn’t an outlier. It’s a headline. The Shakeshaft Report proved the abuse was always there. Social media just made it harder to hide.

So yeah, HS Class of ‘94 didn’t see these headlines. Not because it wasn’t happening. Because we weren’t looking.

We’re looking now. Time to do something about it.

---

If you or someone you know has experienced educator sexual abuse, contact RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).

References

1. The US Sun. (2020). Married female teacher ‘told schoolboy lover, 15, “you have a bigger penis than my husband” in sordid texts’. Kandice Barber was accused of having sex with the 15-year-old boy in a field; messages revealed she told him he had a bigger penis than her husband.

2. U.S. Department of Education. (2000). In a national survey conducted for the AAUW Educational Foundation, it was found that roughly 290,000 students experienced some sort of physical sexual abuse by a public school employee between 1991 and 2000.

3. Shakeshaft, C. (2004). Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature. U.S. Department of Education. Shakeshaft found that only 6 percent of students officially reported the educator sexual misconduct they experienced.

4. Jeglic, E. L., et al. (2023). The Nature and Scope of Educator Misconduct in K-12. Sex Abuse, 35(2), 188-213; Psychology Today. (2023). Educator Sexual Misconduct Remains Prevalent in Schools.

5. Jeglic, E. L., et al. (2023). The Nature and Scope of Educator Misconduct in K-12. Sex Abuse, 35(2), 188-213.

6. Shakeshaft, C. (2003). Educator sexual abuse. Hofstra Horizons, 10-13; Wikipedia. (2025). Charol Shakeshaft.

7. Levin Simes. (2025). Sexual Abuse in Public Schools Statistics: Alarming Facts.

8. Jeglic, E. L., et al. (2023). The Nature and Scope of Educator Misconduct in K-12. Sex Abuse, 35(2), 188-213; Psychology Today. (2023). Educator Sexual Misconduct Remains Prevalent in Schools.

9. Levin Simes. (2025). Sexual Abuse in Public Schools Statistics: Alarming Facts; Jeglic, E. L., et al. (2023).

10. ScienceDirect. (2025). An analysis of sexual grooming in cases of child sexual abuse by educators; Shakeshaft, C. (2004).

11. Ferretly. Teacher Student Sexual Relationship Statistics: Addressing the Epidemic of Misconduct and the Critical Role of Social Media Screening.

12. Jeglic, E. L., et al. (2023). The Nature and Scope of Educator Misconduct in K-12. Sex Abuse, 35(2), 188-213.

13. Levin Simes. (2025). Sexual Abuse in Public Schools Statistics: Alarming Facts.

14. CalMatters. (2025). New bill aims to prevent educator sexual abuse in CA schools; Lost Coast Outpost. (2025). ‘Something Can Be Done About This’: New Plan Aims to Stop Sex Abuse in California Schools.

15. Levin Simes. (2025). Sexual Abuse in Public Schools Statistics: Alarming Facts.

16. Wikipedia. (2025). Charol Shakeshaft.

17. Enough Abuse. (2024). Screening School Employees.

18. Jeglic, E. L., et al. (2023). The Nature and Scope of Educator Misconduct in K-12. Sex Abuse, 35(2), 188-213; Shakeshaft, C. (2003, 2004).

19. Jeglic, E. L., et al. (2023). The Nature and Scope of Educator Misconduct in K-12. Sex Abuse, 35(2), 188-213.

20. Jeglic, E. L., et al. (2023). The Nature and Scope of Educator Misconduct in K-12. Sex Abuse, 35(2), 188-213.

21. Ferretly. Teacher Student Sexual Relationship Statistics: Addressing the Epidemic of Misconduct and the Critical Role of Social Media Screening.

22. Levin Simes. (2025). Sexual Abuse in Public Schools Statistics: Alarming Facts.