Thanks for posting this.
Presuming a 25-students-to-1-teacher ratio (close to what the NEA desires, but I'm really just trying for simple math here), 500 "accused" cases a year would translate to 1,960,000 public school teachers (or roughly 1.6M if we grant one teacher for every 30 students) - if you have more accurate numbers, please post them!. 500 cases a year, times 50 years (to attempt an apples-for-apples comparison with the Catholics' John Jay Study) gives us 25,000 cases over the last half-century.
While 25,000 hypothesized "accusations" is roughly six times the number of Catholic "accusations", 25,000 cases out of 1,600,000 teachers gives us a 1.3 to 1.56% ratio of sexually abusive teachers out of the entire public school system over a fifty year period - more than twice the volume of Protestant pastoral abuse, and less than half the volume of Catholic priest abuse.
If we're after equal treatment in the media, I would expect there to be at least double the number of Catholic news stories as Public School stories, and four times as many Catholic news stories as Protestant news stories based on the percentage of perverts that exist with their respective organizations. IMO the disproportionate amount of coverage is the result of increased interest, when those organizations are caught protecting the abusers at the expense of the victims.
Matthew 5:25:
”Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still with him on the way, or he may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison.
The key here is “accusations.” As a former teacher, I can tell you that just as many accusations of priests were hushed up, so too accusation of teachers. The schools responded by encouraging the teacher to leave the district and find employment elsewhere. If he—and it was usually he—went quietly, his file would be cleared. In short, no paper trail. There are some 12,000 school districts in the United States and no real hierarchy. Unless the teacher protested his innocence, no one above the level of the Superintendents’ office would be aware of the matter. Given the constant need for teachers in the United States, the teacher would have no trouble getting job, provided he were willing to travel anywhere.