The Hidden Epidemic of Teacher Sexual Abuse in Public Schools

Nearly one in five students in America’s public schools will experience sexual misconduct by a teacher, coach, or other school employee.

That staggering figure comes not from activists, but from decades of research by Virginia Commonwealth University professor Charol Shakeshaft. The statistic (17%) was recently highlighted in a Los Angeles Times investigation. Prominent victims’ attorney John Manly, who helped expose Larry Nassar’s abuse of U.S. gymnasts, calls it an “epidemic.” In California alone, his firm has identified roughly 350 teacher-perpetrators since 2012. Yet most parents have never heard these numbers.

This is not ancient history. It is happening now, in 2026, while the public school system largely operates with the same protective mechanisms the Catholic Church once used to shield predators: internal investigations that go nowhere, “pass the trash” reassignments to new schools, and a deliberate lack of transparency with parents.

Recall the 2002 Boston Globe exposé on Fr. John J. Geoghan. One priest. 130 victims in a single archdiocese. Decades of shuffling him between parishes while leaders looked the other way. The resulting national reckoning produced zero-tolerance policies, massive payouts, and a dramatic drop in new credible allegations. Yet a nearly identical pattern is repeating today on a much larger scale inside public education, with far less scrutiny.

In a 2024 interview with Jill Anderson of Harvard University, Shakeshaft defines sexual misconduct as “targeting a student in a sexual way. It could be language. It could be behaviors. It could be sharing pornographic materials. The behaviors can be anyplace from playing with their hair and talking to them about sex, to hugging in a sexual way, to sexual intercourse.”

According to Manly, there are no statewide requirements for schools that have fired staff for sexual misconduct to notify parents of the alleged abuse that took place. 

Furthermore, in some school districts, employees who are mandatory reporters to law enforcement face little to no repercussions when they fail their legal duty to report. The process of reporting to legal authorities is almost always skirted in favor of an internal investigation, which is not a legal substitute. Such internal investigations generally, at best, lead to any staff found responsible for abuse simply being relocated to a different school. Manly says this is a common practice known as “pass the trash.”

One such example is the Los Angeles Unified School District, which has approved $750 million in bonds for 370 child abuse claims received since 2020. The settlements along with “pass the trash” practices make up the extent of disciplinary and retributive action in the district. 

While Manly has highlighted intentional shuffling of staff in order to sweep instances of abuse under the rug, Shakeshaft points out that ignorance of the duty, when and how to report, also perpetuates misconduct. Shakeshaft has testified as a witness in a multitude of abuse cases, and in several of them she says administrators, teachers, parents, and other students do not understand their duty to report, when something is truly a red flag or a boundary has been crossed, or how the reporting ought to be done. This issue is compounded by fear of retaliation.

The fix to this part of the issue, Shakeshaft says, is simple: school employees must be told the signs more explicitly. Some signs include:

• Seeing a teacher take a student home from school (without proper authorization or notification)

• Seeing student(s) in a teacher’s classroom repeatedly before or after class or during breaks

• Seeing a door shut with just one student in the room

• Covered windows in the classroom

• Seeing a teacher spend time alone with one or a small group of students after hours

• Hearing students express that a school employee is “creepy”

Shakeshaft further points out that policies related to hiring and supervision are insufficient and outdated, allowing potential perpetrators to join staff and go undetected. 

Consider again the Boston Roman Catholic clergy scandal. One priest drew accusations from 130 victims in one archdiocese. That exposure eventually revealed 16,000 credible allegations. Yet, the L.A. Unified School District has already received more than double the initial Boston figure in child abuse claims just since 2020. The parallel is unmistakable.  What the Roman Catholic Church once did through reassignment and silence, too many public school systems also do through “pass the trash,” internal cover-ups, and willful ignorance of mandatory reporting laws. The scale of the problem is significant and no longer hidden in the shadows. It is happening in plain sight, in the very institutions entrusted with the daily care of America’s children.

Worldview Roundup:

The prevalence of sexual misconduct in public schools is not merely a policy failure. It is a collision of worldviews. It exposes a system that treats children as disposable and adults’ convenience as sacred. 

Scripture is clear: children are image-bearers of God (Genesis 1:27), entrusted first to parents, not to the state (Deuteronomy 6:6-7; Ephesians 6:4; Psalm 127:3-5). When schools become places where predators are protected and parents are kept in the dark, the culture has rejected the biblical order of family, authority, and justice. “Passing the trash,” ignoring mandatory reporting, and sloppy hiring practices are not neutral administrative shortcomings. They are the fruit of a worldview that elevates institutional self-preservation and adult ease above the protection of the vulnerable.

Christians are called to be salt and light in public places (Matthew 5:13-16). That effort is grounded in an explicit rejection of the lie that education is morally neutral. Every curriculum, policy, and personnel decision shapes the hearts and minds of children. It is a form of discipleship, whether the school admits it or not. Parents who have already risen up to reform reading lists and library shelves possess the same authority and responsibility when it comes to hiring practices, transparency, and the deliberate cover-up of abuse. The same biblical mandate that compels us to guard our children’s minds and hearts also compels us to guard their bodies and souls.

Parents are the primary educators and protectors of their children, not the school board, not the union, not the HR department. If families choose to keep their children in public schools, they must do so with eyes wide open, as well as with a call to justice. This includes demanding common sense reforms like background-check transparency, a call to end the practice of “passing the trash,” a refusal to accept internal cover-ups as substitutes for law enforcement. Above all, Christians should model for the watching world what it looks like when a people actually believe that every child bears the image of God whose safety is worth fighting for.