Some time around midnight on August 19th 1991, Mark Fry, a high-school history teacher in a wealthy Chicago suburb, was arrested on a student's roof. He was dressed in black, wearing a ski mask and carrying a can of Mace. School officials, fearful of bad publicity, did what many otherwise decent people do in such cases: they wrote glowing letters of recommendation for Mr Fry and sent him somewhere else. He became a high-school principal in Wisconsin, where he was arrested and convicted seven years later for molesting a student. As the Roman Catholic church squirms in the spotlight over charges of sexual abuse of young people, that spotlight needs to be shone in some other corners. Sex offenders who prey on children go where children are, says Ernie Allen, president of the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. They teach in schools, coach sports teams, run scout troops and day-care centres. Charol Shakeshaft, a professor at Hofstra University and the author of a forthcoming book on sexual violence in schools, has found that 15% of pupils are sexually abused by a teacher or staff member between kindergarten and high-school graduation, and that up to 5% of teachers sexually abuse or harass students. A recent FBI child-pornography sting, Operation Candyman, nabbed a teacher, a teacher's assistant, a school bus driver and an athletics coach.
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