Posted on 05/01/2019 12:26:11 PM PDT by Jyotishi
Complete title: When he was a priest, this N.J. teacher impregnated a 16-year-old. No, you can't fire him, school district is told.
A veteran Burlington County teacher who had a baby with a 16-year-old girl while he was a Catholic priest nearly 30 years ago should not lose his job because of his past, a state arbitrator told the school district.
Cinnaminson school officials brought up tenure charges against middle school teacher Joseph DeShan earlier this year after parents learned about his history as a priest in the diocese in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
DeShan left the priesthood in 1994, four years after he impregnated a teenage girl in a church youth group he had allegedly been sexually abusing since she was 14, according to news reports in Connecticut newspapers after the relationship was revealed in 2002.
By then, DeShan was already a popular teacher in Cinnaminson. School officials removed him from the classroom for three weeks in 2002 while they investigated. But he quickly returned to teaching after some parents and students rallied to his defense.
Earlier this year, the school district changed its mind and filed tenure charges against DeShan after the parents of current students learned about the former priest's past and complained to the school board that a “rapist” was teaching their children at Cinnaminson Middle School.
DeShan is included on a list of current and former clergy members credibly accused of sexual abuse released by the Diocese of Bridgeport. DeShan said the sexual relationship with the teenager was consensual and he was never prosecuted in Connecticut due to the statute of limitations law on sexual abuse.
Cinnaminson school officials argued “parental and societal views have changed” in the last few years, according to tenure charges filed against the teacher in January. The district said DeShan should be
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
I’m as surprised as anyone to hear that he wasn’t a fag.
Fire him... out of a cannon...
Terrible, but my first thought too.
Cinnaminson?
Guess they like it spicy there.
How does he pass a child safety background check? Why bother with them if they are going to let known pedophiles teach?
This is nuts. No tenure agreement would protect him from this. Something else is going on.
I wish they had taken this attitude with Kavanaugh. ;)
But no. It is not reasonable to fire someone for this. It’s like firing someone who was in prison and, when asked, said they had been in prison.
Now, if they asked him about this in the job interview or application and he said no or did not mention it, then they could fire him. But it seems that is not what happened.
My question as well. Perhaps because he was never officially prosecuted for the crime? So nothing ever would show on a background check of him?
Cinnaminson?
On the far away island of Salamasond, Yertle the Turtle was king of the pond.
For some reason, my mind went to Dr Suess.
Unless he was an administrator, different rules for them it seems.
Good one :)
Seuss would have had a field day with today’s idiocy.
There have been cases in New York State of union school teschers being arrested, tried, and convicted, while continuing to draw full salary and benefits until the day they had exhausted their final appeals.
We had a case very similar to this when I was chair of the SB. We fired him anyway and took our chances legally. We gambled he wouldn’t sue and have his history drawn out.
This is why you homeschool .. no teachers who are pedophiles...
Can’t fire him? Just tell the school he voted for Trump and Kate Smith is his favorite singer...Problem solved.
I had to endure a “conservative” theologian in 1984 at a Bible Conference extolling day care centers over home environments, because, he contended, most abusers are close relatives.
So much for parental authority and God’s design.
I’m gonna give him a pass - a (apparently) single incidence of consensual sex with a 16 year old 30 years ago and nothing else on his record.....how many of us would be unemployable if everything we ever did was held against us ...
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