by Larry Sand
The federal government has intensified efforts to curb rampant sexual abuse of students in the nation’s schools and to end the despicable practice of “passing the trash.”
In the prison hierarchy, individuals convicted of crimes against children occupy the lowest rung of the social ladder, are despised, and labeled “short eyes.” In fact, no crime an adult can commit—short of murder—is more heinous. Yet this disgusting act is prevalent and unchecked in U.S. K-12 schools.
A 2024 North Carolina case illustrates this educational malfeasance. In Durham County, a student at Neal Middle School said her chorus teacher, Troy Pickens, had groped her and, only a few years later, disclosed that he’d raped her. James Key, the school’s principal, didn’t open an investigation until the child’s mother became involved. Even then, in a subsequent civil suit that settled out of court, the principal failed to report the groping allegation to law enforcement or child protective services, as required by state law. Instead, Key allowed Pickens to resign, letting him remain in the field.
Several months later, Pickens applied for another teaching job in nearby Wake County. He secured the position, in part because of a positive review from Key, who, according to the civil suit, never disclosed any information about the inquiry into his misconduct.
Before long, Pickens sexually abused a student at his new school. “The methodical assaults in a school bathroom, as detailed in court records, included digital penetration and forced fellatio. The student came forward about the abuse only two years later, after Pickens was arrested for raping the student back at Neal.”
But as in Durham County, the Wake County district permitted the predator to resign.
To address this kind of perversity, on May 5, the United States Department of Education launched a Title IX investigation into how the Los Angeles Unified School District, perhaps the most shameful school district in the country, handled teacher misconduct, specifically accusing LAUSD of appearing to “protect sexual predators at the expense of its students.”
According to federal officials, LAUSD’s contract with the United Teachers of Los Angeles guarantees that teachers will be reassigned, a practice commonly known as “passing the trash,” rather than terminated or immediately removed from the classroom while officials investigate, even when teachers face credible accusations, such as:
- Sexual harassment of a student.
- Behavior with a student that is motivated by sexual interest.
- Maintaining a sexual or romantic relationship with a student or other minor.
- Creating, selling, or using child pornography.
- Unnecessary physical contact with a student.
- Failure to report suspected child abuse.
The rest of California is no better than Los Angeles. ProPublica and KQED reported in May that the state did not revoke the professional licenses of 67 teachers whom school districts determined had sexually harassed students or committed other forms of sexual misconduct between 2019 and 2025.
According to the report, other Golden State schools hired at least 14 of those educators, and at least 12 were still working in education as of May.
It’s worth noting that California taxpayers are paying heavily for the child abuse, with school districts and public agencies facing billions of dollars in cumulative liability and settlements stemming from historical child sexual abuse lawsuits.
Then, in July, to address this widespread problem, the DOE launched a new national initiative that includes guidance for school districts on their existing legal obligations under federal laws to respond to allegations of sexual misconduct, as well as research on how 20 school districts across the country handle allegations of sexual impropriety and harassment.
The DOE cites past studies of educators’ sexual misconduct, showing that this is hardly a new problem. A 2010 Government Accountability Office report examined 15 cases in which schools hired staff with histories of sexual improprieties. In six of those cases, the GAO found that these employees went on to abuse additional children. Contributing factors included districts allowing staff to resign rather than face discipline, often providing new employers with positive references, conducting incomplete criminal history checks before hiring staff, failing to conduct them at all, and failing to review troubling criminal history information on employees’ job applications.
Going back even further, an estimated 17 percent of students in U.S. public schools—about 8 million children—were sexually abused by teachers or staff in 2004, indicating an epidemic far larger than previously recognized.
In August, during an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon criticized school districts’ practice of reassigning a teacher accused of sexually abusing a student to another school.
Citing research conducted by her department, McMahon noted that, shockingly, one in ten schoolchildren will be sexually molested by the time they finish high school.
As of June 2026, the latest data show that only 19 states and D.C. have enacted laws addressing educator sexual misconduct, requiring new practices to screen prospective employees and prohibiting schools from aiding and abetting school employees engaged in sexual misconduct by using confidentiality agreements that suppress information about the misconduct when those employees seek positions at other schools.
Then, on Oct. 7, the DOE announced that it had opened yet another sexual misconduct investigation, this one involving multiple New York school districts. The department cited the recent Decades of Harm investigation, which examined allegations of sexual abuse of children in New York schools spanning nearly 70 years.
The DOE’s Office for Civil Rights’ statement said, “According to reporting, nearly two thousand complaints filed under the state’s Child Victims Act accuse a school, educator, or staff member of sexual abuse. Most chilling is that, instead of protecting students to ensure these incidents would never happen again, the schools allegedly allowed the accused to evade punishment and resign.”
As the investigations continue, what can parents do about this abysmal situation?
Until “passing the trash” is eliminated, sending your child to a public school is risky because it means handing your child over to a stranger for six or seven hours a day. At least a private school can fire a pedophile, but in public schools, removing sexual predators is not a priority for many districts and teachers’ unions. As such, parents would be better off homeschooling their child.
Larry Sand
Source: https://amgreatness.com/2026/10/20/pedophilia-proliferates-in-u-s-schools/
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