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Teacher Sex Crimes & Social Media

While there are many positives to the use of social media, there are just as many negatives. The rise in teacher performed sex acts has brought to light what advocates say is a life-threatening issue to children across the country.

Just recently, Cleveland County deputies arrested 25-year-old Emma Costner after they accused the former math teacher of performing sex acts with a 17-year-old student.

“This is a school safety issue that’s ignored,” Terri Miller, president of the Nevada-based group, Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct and Exploitation, said. “In 2016, there were 540 reports, and it spiked last year in 2017 to 698 reports.”

What is causing the sudden increase?

Experts believe one reason for this dramatic rise is social media, which makes it easier for teachers and students to communicate through text messages, Facebook and apps like Snapchat. Miller said parents should monitor their children’s phones and social media profiles and know what apps they are using at all times.

“Because you just don’t know who’s going to climb in bed with your children through that technology,” Miller said.

According to the most recent data from a nationwide survey of 8th- to 11th-grade students asking about incidents of unwanted sexual attention at school, nearly 7%, or about 3.5 million students, report having physical sexual contact from an adult, most commonly a teacher or coach, in their school (Shakeshaft, 2004). These students describe unwanted touching on breasts, buttocks, and genitals; forced kissing and hugging; oral/genital contact; and vaginal and anal intercourse.

Reports of educator misconduct that doesn’t include touching a student, but rather sharing pornography, sexual talk, sexual exhibitionism, or masturbation raised the proportion to about 10%, or nearly 4.5 million students (Shakeshaft, 2004).

What are the warning signs of educator sexual misconduct?

The phrase “educator sexual misconduct” was coined about a decade ago and envelops a range of inappropriate to criminal sexual behaviors that include verbal, visual, and physical misconduct. While some behavior is not criminal, all of the behaviors are unacceptable when directed by an adult, especially a school-based authority figure, toward a student.

What is most alarming is that education and programs to stop sexual abuse are directed toward children, asking them to do what adults will not — report the incidents. While children need to learn risky situation identification and refusal skills, it should not be their responsibility to ensure schools are safe places for all students. That falls on teachers and administrators.

Educators can prevent much of the sexual misconduct in schools if they know how to recognize and respond to suspicious patterns and if administrators enforce an environment of high expectations for behavior. Law enforcement recommends parents have frequent, proactive conversations with their kids about the dangers of being online. It’s one of the only ways that are effective to prevent a child from becoming a child victim because once the predator is engaged with the child, it almost is never reported– even if a sexual assault occurs.

“The child rarely reports to the parent or law enforcement, Hey I’ve been sending nude photos or I’ve been sexting with these people and now they’re extorting me or this person wants to meet me, is that a good idea?” Agent Neville said.

Agent Neville continued by saying law enforcement typically only learns of child sexual assault incidents because of parents stumble upon what has been happening. If that never happens, though, the assault will likely go unreported.

The Pros and Cons of Social Media Background Checks

You are in the process of interviewing candidates for a position and you have narrowed it down to your top 3. Typically you conduct background checks by calling references and verifying previous employment. But in today’s world where everything revolves around social media, it’s no surprise that Human Resources departments are turning to social media platforms to check their candidates’ backgrounds before making any hiring decisions.

Let’s take a look at the Pros and Cons of conducting social media background checks:

Advantages

1. Easy Background Check

Social media screening is a cheap way for a background check, the employer can access them anywhere they are and can make an immediate decision of hiring the candidate. It saves a lot of time to learn about the candidate through Facebook and LinkedIn profiles and does not require any additional money to be spent. Facebook posts are an easy insight into the candidate’s day to day life; Twitter is good to learn about how opinionated they are or about their personal thoughts. On the other hand, LinkedIn is good to learn about their professional makeup. With so many aspects available on the web, it is easy to know about the candidate in a complete way.

2. Eliminating Discrepancies

Social media background checks are a good way to confirm information on a candidate’s resume. Social media sites often provide information on the user’s previous occupations and work history. You can compare to see if there are any discrepancies in the resume they submit for the open position. A candidate may also claim to be an expert in a specific subject matter or have participated in certain volunteering efforts. Most of this information can be confirmed online on their social media platforms.

3. You Learn Who Your Candidate Really Is

Why do people tend to be more open and vulnerable on social media? Whether on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, users often let their guard down and are completely honest. Whatever the reason, this can prove to be beneficial to HR because few candidates feel free to truly be themselves in such a formal and high-pressure environment. During the job interview the candidate tends to put up the best foot in every aspect, hence, it does not provide the complete picture as to how a candidate will behave on a day to day basis at work.

But looking at online profiles can tell you what someone is passionate about or how they treat other people. It can also help you spot red flags. Does your candidate have a habit of ranting about her boss and colleagues online? Does an applicant who seemed friendly in the interview crack racist or sexist jokes on Twitter?

The information revealed by a social media background check is rarely essential to the hiring process, but in some cases, it can help you spot major red flags about a person’s character. Respect for others is always the main agenda for an employer that they look in a candidate and this information can easily be found in social media space. Someone who badmouths a company or spouts off derogatory remarks online is not a good ambassador for your brand and is probably someone you want to pass over when you are hiring.

Disadvantages

Legal Risks

While your social media background screening may seem innocent and purely professional, you could be exposed to potential legal risks in terms of privacy and human rights should your background screening methods be used against you. The legal risks may arise from the public information you gathered about the candidate.

For example, a candidate might list his age, race, religion, or sexual orientation as part of a Facebook profile. Whether you want to admit it or not, subconsciously learning this information about an applicant may affect how you feel about them. Hiring managers are at full liberty to have their own opinions about sensitive political, religious, and lifestyle matters, however, the second those opinions influence a hiring decision, they become discrimination.

Privacy Settings

Most social media sites allow users to adjust the privacy settings on their profiles. Smart candidates are more careful with what they post online. With this knowledge, candidates can easily create a social media profile that works to their advantage and HR has no choice but to accept what can be seen publicly as the truth. Be mindful that what you see is not always what you get.

You Might End Up Wasting Time

One of the biggest problems with social media background checks is that it’s unpredictable. Finding people on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn can be a challenge if you don’t share any connections or mutual friends. And even if you do find your candidate, privacy settings on social platforms can make it impossible to view their posts. Social media background checks can end up being a lot of work for potentially no return.

Conclusion

If you’re thinking about browsing the social media profiles of your top candidates, you need to consider both arguments before deciding.

Always run other types of background checks regardless of your position on social media background checks. Social media can tell you more about a person – from general likes and dislikes to character details – but it can’t replace traditional and trusted background check sources such as criminal screenings and employment verification checks.

If you ever decide to use a candidate’s social media profile for hiring purposes – whether to find contact information or to run a full-blown social media background examination – have someone other than the hiring manager do the work. Looking at a Facebook page can unintentionally reveal too much information – as such, it’s a good idea to have a person uninvolved with the hiring manager look through the applicant’s social accounts and prepare a report of relevant or potentially relevant information. This person can act as a filter, keeping information that might create a bias out of the hands of the hiring manager.

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Social Media Helps Solve Cases

Do criminals want social media likes so badly that they will incriminate themselves? Apparently so.

Last week a cocaine dealer’s student girlfriend helped police bust a major drug ring by bragging about her luxury lifestyle on Instagram. Emily Lock, 22, of Llanbradach, Caerphilly, earned less than $10,000 as a checkout worker at Lidl, but openly flashed designer clothes, shoes and extravagant holidays. Along with her dealer boyfriend Mark Price, 27, they spent over $100,000 on foreign travel and high end goods. So that has authorities wondering where did they get that kind of cash? Drugs maybe?

Lock and Price, who claimed to be a struggling builder, repeatedly purchased Vivienne Westwood handbags, Gucci sunglasses, Christian Louboutin shoes and Christian Dior perfume. She ended up being jailed for 15 months and landed her boyfriend behind bars for seven years.

Check out these other not-so-bright crooks who incriminated themselves with their posts.

1) Conor Murphy, 19, posted a picture of himself on Facebook eating a ‘Cash Sandwich’. The pictures would eventually lead police to connect him to an eight-man gang who stole a fleet of expensive, high-performance cars from some of London’s wealthiest residents. They stole BMWs, Range Rovers, Porsches and a $100,000 Mercedes – as well as jewelry, phones and laptops in 15 separate burglaries. Detectives finally caught them after one of the gang members posted a picture of himself on Facebook sitting on the hood of a stolen black Range Rover.

2) Leon Roberts, 38, and Jade Muzoka, 27, claimed damages after their weeks’ vacation in Turkey. The couple alleged they both suffered from food poisoning and tried to collect around $3,000 compensation. But just days after returning home the bodybuilders uploaded 79 photos on social media bragging about their trip, including pictures of them guzzling drinks and dining on steak, lobster and sushi.

In a doctor’s note they claimed to have been bedridden with vomiting and diarrhea, but their pictures proved otherwise. Luckily, the images they posted saved the resort from having to pay over $2,500 in alleged damages. They were busted and given a 26-week jail sentence and ordered to serve 200 hours community service.

3) Drug dealer Junior Francis, 33, boasted about his extravagant lifestyle on social media before being caught with $7,000 cash and $75,000 worth of crack cocaine and heroin during a home raid. Francis posted pictures online of him posing with wads of cash pressed like a telephone to the side of his face. In an Instagram post he quoted rapper Notorious BIG, writing ‘everything I got I work hard for it’ under a picture showing thousands of pounds in cash on a kitchen top. Smart, right?

He initially denied any involvement in drug dealing during an interview after the home raid but when police checked his mobile phone, they found evidence of transactions with street level dealers in south London. Francis was jailed for six years and eight months after admitting possession with intent to supply Class A drugs and money laundering.

4) The mysterious murder case of a Canadian girl was solved after police found clues in the Facebook selfie posted by her friend. Brittney Gargol, 18, was found dead near a landfill in March 2015 and an autopsy later revealed that she died of strangulation. Gargol’s friend Cheyenne Antoine, 21, plead guilty to manslaughter after they found a Facebook selfie showing her wearing the belt used to strangle her friend. The wide blue woven belt with a large buckle was found on a roadside next to Gargol’s body, and Antoine was seen wearing the same belt in a photo posted to her Facebook account just hours before the killing, according to the Saskatoon Star Phoenix.

Investigators got suspicious of Antoine when she initially told them about spending time with the victim the night she died, but left her friend to visit her uncle. That statement was later proven false. Antoine then told investigators that she and Gargol partied with two men, who allegedly strangled the victim and put a gun to her head to help them. The second statement was also proven false.

“It’s quite remarkable how the police developed this information,” prosecutor Robin Ritter said in court adding that Antoine poses a threat to public safety. She “has issues … and because of those issues, she is dangerous.” At her court appearance Monday, Antoine’s lawyer, Lisa Watson, said her client suffered through sexual, emotional and physical abuse as she grew up in foster care. “My client had some very deep-seeded personal issues that she was not dealing with and unfortunately, for whatever reason, we’ll never know, they turned into a very tragic situation for all involved,” Watson said.

Workplace Harassment and Social Media

For decades, instances of sexual harassment have been brushed under the rug and business have only reacted when it’s “really bad” or “high profile.” But a staggering 1 in 5 Americans reports being sexually harassed at work and 75% of those who report their abuser experienced retaliation for speaking up.

Thanks to social media and the #MeToo movement, as well as the general movement to become better human beings, sexual harassment is no longer being tolerated.

So what can business owners and human resources managers do to make work a better place?

The first step is for business owners to educate themselves about sexual harassment, including the basics of harassment, discrimination, retaliation and workplace bullying. All managers should know their responsibilities and liability, as well as their duty to prevent harassment and abuse. It’s up to owners to lead the way in the workplace’s professional and respectful behavior. You should know how to receive and respond to a complaint and be familiar with confidentiality guidelines and the rights of all people involved.
Business owners must implement workplace strategies to prevent occurrences of harassment. Establish boundaries and policies regarding harassment and make sure all new and existing employees are trained in those areas and are taught how to file a complaint.
Business owners must enforce the company’s policies and practices. Offenders must be disciplined according to the severity of their behavior. Penalties could include one-on-one sensitivity training, suspension with or without pay, or possible termination. When policies and procedures are enforced, it demonstrates a no tolerance stance to employees and will further discourage workplace harassment.

Don’t ignore your employees when they say they’re being harassed. It can be isolating, humiliating, and stressful for an employee to come forward about an abuser, particularly if that person has corporate power over them or is well-liked by peers.
Last, look for indicators of abusive behavior before hiring. You’re probably asking yourself how can you possibly spot a harasser before hiring them? Check social media! This is a far better method than standard or criminal background checks used widely in business today. Social media screening can identify potential harassers by flagging material that willingly and publicly disparages women or minorities online, or that blatantly promotes sex or violence.
Sexual harassment is a complex issue and as difficult as it may be, the effort to prevent workplace harassment matters. Aside from the distress caused by workplace harassment, discrimination and retaliation, the behavior is illegal. Anyone that commits these acts is a tremendous liability. Addressing harassment proactively instead of reactively avoids personal, business and legal problems.

It’s also important to provide resources for anyone experiencing abuse, and make sure your HR team knows what to do when harassment is reported. If an employee does not feel safe reporting the problem, they probably won’t, and this means the problem will only grow as an attacker feels trapped by silence. That spells disaster for employee morale as well as for your business’s reputation if you’re caught with a harassment scandal you did nothing to prevent.