UPDATED (1:55 p.m.)—The principal at a Baltimore City private high school has resigned amid allegations of inappropriate communications with students.
According to Mount St. Joseph's website, Barry Fitzpatrick has stepped down from his post at the West Baltimore all-boys school.
The following message, from Mount St. Joseph President George Andrews, was posted on the school's website Wednesday.
Yesterday afternoon, I accepted former Principal Barry Fitzpatrick’s resignation. Mount Saint Joseph High School requires our faculty and administrators to have only appropriate communications with our students. We recently discovered communications from Mr. Fitzpatrick that he acknowledged were inappropriate, and we accepted his resignation. As required by law, we have reported these communications to the proper authorities.
Assistant Principal David Norton, our Director of Studies, will serve as Acting Principal.
Our students mean everything to us. That was immediately clear to me the day I first arrived at the Mount in 1987. As such, we have the highest expectations for our faculty and administrators. And when these standards are not met, we have a responsibility to our boys and their families to take action.
A spokesperson for Mount St. Joseph confirmed the validity of the statement and said the school would have no further comment at this time.
Aside from serving as principal, Fitzpatrick also taught Latin at the school at the time of a Patch interview in September. He also previously served as a soccer coach at the school.
According to his profile on LinkedIn, Fitzpatrick had been principal at Mount St. Joseph since 1994, after serving as a counselor from 1986 to 1994. Prior to that, he was principal from 1980 to 1986 at Our Lady of Good Counsel in Wheaton.
Stay with Patch for updates.
Concordia Res Parvae Crescunt--------------------
Married teacher, 32, 'had sex with SEVEN of her students aged just 15 and 16 for more than a year' http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2271306/Married-teacher-sex-SEVEN-students-aged-just-15-16-year.html#axzz2JhRCWYSS 'Happily married' teacher and mother-of-two fired for 'having sex with two of her 17-year-old students' 'Happily married' teacher and mother-of-two fired for 'having sex with two of her 17-year-old students' Female teacher who 'tried to flee to Mexico with 15-year-old lover' ordered to hand in her passport http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2269155/Houston-teacher-Kathryn-Murray-accused-having-sex-teen-twice-classroom.html#axzz2JhRCWYSS Teacher whose sexual affair with one student was exposed on Twitter is sentenced to 12 months in jail over relationship with ANOTHER teen http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2257377/Teacher-Anna-Michelle-Walters-sexual-affair-student-exposed-Twitter-sentenced-12-months-jail-relationship-ANOTHER-teen.html#axzz2JhRCWYSS
If this was happening in doctors offices it would definitely receive much more press and efforts to stop these serial molesters.
No secret source of these stories. They are published in all the local media where they occur. Occasionally they get a little national coverage. I do see this problem as huge but ignored. I do keep bookmarks of everyone I find. How many do you want me to post? There are hundreds and more every month. Many Evets do not see a good looking woman teacher having sex with an underage boy as all that bad. If is it a male teacher with underage females it may get attention. If a male teacher with underage male students it gets less scrutiny for some reason. Look around by googling teacher molester or other words and you too have access to all the stories.
In other words, unless it is studied it does not exist? Sort of like if NBC ABC does not cover a story it is not news worthy? COURT RECORDS of convictions and sentences are all anyone needs to see the problem Evets. Studies on hundreds of convicted teachers is something that no one apparently want to undertake. We can speculate on the reasons. If actual cases from many local sources are not enough for you to understand that there is a problem with teachers molesting children, but a study of all those cases is, I cannot help you and you will continue to defend your profession. I understand that. A case study can only be done with actual cases on the books. Not like there are not enough cases on the books.
Reviews of molester teacher cases drag on. By CHRISTINA HOAG, Associated Press 3:30 p.m.Jan. 25, 2013LOS ANGELES — "Months after the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing was notified of a Los Angeles Unified elementary school teacher suspected of molesting at least a dozen students and a principal who failed to report him to authorities, the agency has not taken action on the cases." http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2013/jan/25/calif-agency-takes-months-to-review-misconduct/ The teachers unions actually fought to keep it hard to fire molesting teachers. "Fire Teachers Who Molest Kids? LAUSD Needs a Committee to Study the Question After decades of lax treatment of teachers who molest children or commit other serious crimes, the Los Angeles School Board is finally ready to take action — well, to think about taking action. What the school board did Tuesday night was to water down a proposal to move quickly to get rid of criminal teachers and then approve forming a task force headed by Occidental College President Ted Mitchell to study possible changes in state laws and presumably union contracts." "L.A. school board votes 4-3 on motion to ease teacher firing The Los Angeles Unified school board narrowly passed a resolution Tuesday to suggest changes to state laws that would expedite the firing of teachers accused of serious crimes."
57,900,000 results teachers: 76,200 results" Seems like a problem to me even if you discount 50% of those results. Here is one study by Charol Shakeshaft , Professor Department of Foundations, Leadership and Policy Studies. Hofstra http://www.hofstra.edu/pdf/about/administration/provost/hofhrz/hofhrz_s03_shakeshaft.pdf From this study as I noted before, mostly local stories and little interest nationally much less big studies that would bring this terrible issue to the forefront where it belongs. "Despite a number of national studies about child sexual abuse funded by the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Justice, and the U.S. Department of Education, there are no national studies that document educator sexual abuse.1 It is curious to note that none of the federally funded studies of child sexual abuse provide data that could answer parents’ questions. In these studies, teachers are most often subsumed in the category “other” that includes any person who is not a parent or parent substitute. Since 49 percent of children are sexually abused by someone other than a parent or parent substitute, it seems sensible to know what types of “others” are sexually abusing children." No one Evets, wants to draw the wrath of the powerful teachers unions to expose this widespread problem.
hardly a reliable sample. However, newspaper coverage does remind us that educator sexual abuse is a regular occurrence in all parts of the United States. Below is a sampling of stories that were published during just one month (February 2003) and which represent only those incidents that have come to the attention of school and law enforcement officials." "My secondary analysis of the 2000 AAUW data2 indicates that 9.6 percent of all students in grades 8 to 11 report educator sexual abuse." Let us not dismiss the many cases that are not reported by the victim. Do not doubt this is a huge issue Evets. It is a moral and criminal issue few want to discuss or do anything about until it happens. This is a problem apparently best left as individual occurrences and not a national issue. This is too bad for all the children scarred for life by these teachers.
A study from the US Dept of Education. This IS a serious problem Evets and it needs national attention.
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10538712.2010.495045?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3dpubmed& http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10538712.2010.495047?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%3dpubmed Here is a liberal websites take on the issue. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2012/02/is_sexual_abuse_in_schools_very_common_.html "The best available study suggests that about 10 percent of students suffer some form of sexual abuse during their school careers. If these numbers are representative of the student population nationwide, 4.5 million students currently in grades K-12 have suffered some form of sexual abuse by an educator, and more than 3 million have experienced sexual touching or assault. This number would include both inappropriate romantic relationships between teachers and upperclassmen, and outright pedophilia. "
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-215_162-1933687.html "Hofstra University researcher Charol Shakeshaft looked into the problem, and the first thing that came to her mind when Education Week reported on the study were the daily headlines about the Catholic Church. "[T]hink the Catholic Church has a problem?" she said. "The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests."" "Teacher sex cases in U. S. public schools unreported, unpunished" "Since 2007, over 2,000 separate sexual abuse cases have been filed against U. S. public school employees. This takes into account the relatively small number of cases dismissed outright, dismissed under plea agreement or changed to other charges upon conviction, but does not include the many others that get swept under the rug, covered-up, or never reported at all, according to records kept by the website BadBadTeacher.com." http://digitaljournal.com/article/290312#ixzz2JqaPPj41 Is this enough for you Evets to understand the widespread problem this is?
Still defensive for some reason. Hofstra, US Dept of Ed not credible?
I want this issue exposed for the widespread issue it is and how it effects these young people for the rest of their lives, not whether "hundreds" or "widespread" are similar or different. I am NOT a journalist though in my experience these days journalists are not as credible. See Journo-list. See MSNBC altering 911 tapes in a emotional murder case. See NBC cutting "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance on the air. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq8tydBo5RI
As for swept under the rug, when we can read and listen about this the issue in respect to its number of convictions accusations and sentencing then I will say it is no longer swept under the rug. You can bet if priests were still being arrested at the same rate as teachers you would be reading and hearing about every singe arrest. AND the continued lawsuits. Even when a teacher is arrested for multiple molestations of students it gets mostly only local coverage. Serial molesters in my world are newsworthy nationally.
I have laid out a case for action.