WTBL - Walking the Blue Line

WTBL Walking The Blue Line (00:12)
Hey, welcome back everyone for another wonderful

what a glorious day. It's beautiful outside springtime here in the state of Washington. 72 degrees out there right

you don't see that very often this time of year, April.

it's been a really big week in news. The world is seeing a lot of things going on right now. ⁓ One of the big things we've been kind of watching is the space voyage of Artemis two. this morning Trump was saying that they gone out the farthest away from the earth anyone ever has.

Right, so they exceeded I think Apollo 13 held the record and they have a Apollo went like ⁓ Around the moon in a close orbit and these guys are doing like an elliptical So they've gone out farther past the moon and then come back again or are coming back, they've started their trip back to Earth and so some of the pictures of the moon It's been kind of exciting to see

On the bad front, you know, there's this conflict going on over in Iran and... Yeah, thanks to the war, gas prices have now gone sky high. I mean, just in the past week or so, they...

It's crazy how high it is. And if you look at the news the two highest states for a national average is California and Washington. yeah. It's crazy. Thanks to the Seattle area voting in all of our extra taxes. We talked about this already. Right. Yeah. Well in San Francisco, they have surpassed an all-time record of eight dollars a gallon for diesel.

Diesel is over eight dollars a gallon in San Francisco remember when diesel used to be cheaper. Yeah Everyone wanted the big diesel pushers for their RVs and stuff because they were less expensive now diesels higher I remember back in the 70s 80s Volvo came out with one of the first diesel sedans, you know, and it was

So inexpensive to run those vehicles because diesel was really cheap compared to gasoline and then of course with environmental pushes and such they went to this manufacturing process of having to extract additional sulfur and the cost of diesel just shot up as well as taxes. ⁓ that's what gets us the taxes and they just keep voting them in.

Well and so along with all that bad news, you know one of the things that caught my eye this past week in the headlines had to do with some child sex scandals in our school and So that's what we're gonna talk about this week because there have been a number of these over the years and the media seems to give you kind of a

Perception about what's going on. does because if you just look at the cases that they show on television stuff you get the impression that it's mostly women teachers that are abusing children. Yeah if you're of our generation or maybe even a little younger if you talk about a teacher sex scandal I mean who pops to mind? Mary Letourneau.

they did a whole movie or at least a series on that on television and her and the boy ended up getting married and they ended up having two children together. it was disturbing because she was like this.

Really good mom that I remember watching that they said, you know, she made all her kids Halloween costumes. She was just like this Perfect teacher mom and then to come to find out she's having sex with a 12 year old, right? Yeah, she was married had children Seem to have kind of an idyllic life for a school teacher and then to have sex with a 12 year old and get pregnant and get pregnant so I guess on one

Hand people would look at that situation and say, know This is kind of the fairy tale romance in the sense that they actually followed through even after she served her prison time They get married and continue a life together for a number of years eventually separating but It was really bizarre and unusual. That's one of those things where you just kind of shake your head I mean, seriously, you can't wrap your brain around it, right?

But when you talk about that, again, going back to what the media is portraying versus what the averages truly are.

if you're watching the media what you would get the impression of is that the majority of offenders out there are Female because those are the stories that seem to grab the headlines Dateline and other shows though The shows that are more popular are about the women that are usually very pretty but in a sexual situation, they focus on the homicides not only have a whodunit but the victims

Had a sexual appeal about them or look even it doesn't have to

What happened to them, but they're looking pretty

when you start looking at the national headlines regarding all of these teacher and ⁓ sexual abuse situations it seems that

All of the women catch the headlines, although if you look at the national statistics, we're saying that men are 85 to 90 % of Yeah, the women are only about 10 % or less. I don't recall the last time I saw a headline of a male teacher being arrested.

So where's the headlines? Where's the reporting on that?

there's all kinds of these cases that are all about women assaulting male students you don't really see the men listed out here. So here's just kind of a little rundown list of a number of the cases that I came across while we were looking into this. this lists 12 cases that

have all happened within the last couple of years. Wisconsin, March of 2026, a special education teacher, Nadia Horn arrested and accused of ⁓ sexually assaulting multiple victims. In Washington, March of 2026, a PE teacher arrested in King County, Florida, February 2026, teacher Mackenzie McLean arrested, had sexual relationships with a student living in her home.

Oklahoma 2026, a teacher arrested after sending 13,000 messages to a student charged with lewd molestation and exploitation. Colorado reported in 2026, teacher Tara Johnson Swartz convicted of grooming and having sex with 16 year old student sentenced to 14 years. Illinois of March 2025, teacher Christina Formella arrested after charged with 55 counts.

Allegedly abuse of a student Texas February 2025 Kara Hernandez Improper relationship with a student, New Jersey 2025 through 2026 teacher Ashley Fisler charged with allegedly having sex, Ohio 2025 Teacher Jameiah Daboubi

pled guilty to a relationship with a 15-year-old student. New York, 2024 to 2025. A private school teacher had been arrested for sexually soliciting sexual images. Texas,

2024 to 2025.

Junior ROTC instructor arrested for charged with indecent assault in New York, June of 2024. Former elementary.

teacher accused of abuse and possession of child sexual abuse material. so that's like 12 different cases. But that's only the women. And if you go back to the statistics.

Less than 10 % of this, nationwide, is women. So if that's how many that is reported for women, can you imagine the ones that are men and you don't hear about it?

I have definitely heard about like one blip here one blip there of this individual was found in possession of child pornography

But very rarely have I heard that it's a male teacher had an institute and you know that this is going on so ⁓ As well as it's so significantly

I have a list here of some facts. So here we go. I'm look at my notes so I get this right. Around 10 % of the students report some form of educator sexual misconduct by the time they graduate.

Then on a 2021 study it found about four point five percent of US students report sexual abuse by a teacher K through 12. Yeah, they kind of have loose parameters in how they define that because they talk about inappropriate or misconduct can range anything from Just conversation in the classroom sending text messages all the way up to physical abuse

Yeah, but it starts out. grooming. That's the biggest thing it starts out slow So I mean we've even done a podcast on some of this before I was like when you're grooming someone you start out low slow and easy just ease them into it and before you know it you're in the middle of something you don't know how to get out of it exactly the Definitely start off with a plan and they start approaching with compliments or gifts or you know, you're my special

Mm-hmm and teacher's pet yeah when I was going to school there were always rumors about yeah You know a teacher here certain teacher here. They're doing certain things I never heard a hundred percent proof, but there was always the little whispers like is this really going on and you know that if I heard that in my small little town and you heard that in your small little town and you know this is going on in the big cities as well, this is

across the entire nation. It's disturbing and unfortunate in those facts didn't it say something like 300,000 students 300,000 plus students per year. Yeah per year experienced some form of sexual abuse by a school staff member.

It extrapolates that a hundreds of thousands of students may be affected at any given time depending on the definitions like you said text a touch just you know grazing or Sending inappropriate messages in their texting or just hey I need you to stop by after school and you talked about something Yeah, can you stay behind for a few minutes so that I can talk with you? Yeah, sometimes that is about

the assignment that day, but sometimes it's just a little bit more about hey that dress you're wearing is really really nice or Something with that effect. Well, there's a disturbing case right here in Spokane Yes, and just come to light Yeah, and so this is the one that actually got my attention because the lady is I think she's in her mid-20s ⁓ Mahala Benavides

a ⁓ special needs teacher that just makes this all the more disturbing and her Student or one of her students that she's abusing is only ten years old So this special needs teacher sure is taking advantage of her position in order to sexually gratify herself You know that this isn't love. No, it's just completely about control and

Power authority and sex and sex. Yeah, and the fact that this went on like five to ten times a day They said right and she's five to ten times a day and sometimes even with other students present And she was filming herself in the classroom They said that she also had a timeout room, which is a room where she could take the student and Put him in a timeout basically be alone secluded from the other

Students and take advantage of him. that's almost every single hour this child is being molested right because their school days You know are a little shorter now I think they're only about six hours long and you got to have lunch break in there and a couple of recesses So it was crazy what is going on? And I'm surprised that she didn't get caught soon her she did

I think one of the ways she did get caught was someone saw a video where she was doing something sexual saying this child's name. Yeah, she would show it to him. we should Disclose at this point in time that these are from media reports. They're going on she hasn't been to court other than her initial arraignment and She hasn't been

guilty at trial as of yet, but these are pretty strong allegations and Based on the media reports the fact that there's video of this showing her doing these things seems like pretty strong evidence that ⁓ What has happened is? Being reported accurately. Yeah so You know you have Mary Kaye Letourneau out there from numerous years ago ⁓ you have this

Lady here in Spokane, which kind of caught my attention for us to even talk about this subject And then this goes on like we were saying, you know nationwide There's another one that got my attention out of Piora, Peoria, Arizona two female teachers and they were both molesting the same child It said he was a high school student. So

In this particular case you have exactly two high school teachers both engaging in sexual activity with a high school student So Even here though the age difference on at least one of them was pretty significant because one of the teachers is 27 and the other teacher

The student's grandmother apparently saw one of these videos on his cell phone and alerted authorities And wasn't that the same kind of video where the teacher was doing something sexual saying that kid's name exactly? Video on herself doing it. Yeah in today's day and age, you know cell phones are probably key And it might be why we see more of this in the news today than we did, you know back when you and I were going to

mostly you hear about the women teachers sexually abusing students, but 85 to 90 % of what they have reported is male teachers and female

female offenders do make up a minority of 10 to 15 percent.

The victims are usually female, but there are some that are males, significantly lower. Many cases involve grooming behaviors such as texting, touching, gifts. We've hit on that already. The reason is that I think this goes on, it's kind of like rape. I think a lot of women don't go in and report rape because first off,

People generally say well, what did you do? What were you wearing?

Personally, I think women don't want to come forward because they don't want to be turned into the The reason that this happened, which I don't think it should be ever that it shouldn't ever be that and you and I have talked about This before as well is that the whole process of being examined a rape kit at the hospital It's not a fun process having to talk with the

is tell your story usually to a police officer first and then before it ever gets to a detective, you have to retell this story numerous times. And you imagine if you're a student, you had to tell your parents and then you had to tell some medical professional and then you have to tell a police officer and then you have to tell a detective. And then if it goes to court, you're gonna have to tell this. victims, I think, are of the mindset that they would like to forget that this ever happened rather than tell it.

I'm not trying to justify a victim not telling their story, but you can definitely see how difficult it would be for them to tell their yeah, well we actually know personally of a case where something like this happened. It wasn't necessarily a school, but it was a girl a man in authority, a figure in her life at that time.

took advantage of her we tried to get her to go forward at least my daughter talked to her but she was afraid I think he eventually ended up giving her money to keep her quiet you know and it worked and you can see as well in these type of situations the whole grooming thing ⁓ yeah makes the student because of their age difference and such believe that this person actually cares for them I don't want to

See them get in trouble. They'll lose their job. They'll lose their family. So the perpetrator it's all about control and sex and manipulation and to the victim they feel like this person actually cares for me and I don't want to see him get in trouble so That's another reason why the victims at least in these situations are frequently not wanting to come forward There's also a fear of retaliation

if they're not led to believe that this person cares about them. They're ashamed

that's not good. that's what happened to this one that we know of was an institutional cover-up where it's we're gonna take care of this and then the guy basically ends up paying them off the student and It's just unfortunate it is unfortunate again the power and

and I worked as a school resource officer at a school here in Spokane County for a couple of years and during my time there I saw situations that were definitely inappropriate They didn't cross the line to where I could do anything on a legal basis Or I was never able to gather enough information to prove that something inappropriate was going on But the things that you told me about I was like, well that would just make me uncomfortable

And when I brought it to the attention of the administration they kind of brushed it off. So that was the same thing with the changing rooms you told them there was a problem about the boys and girls changing rooms and weird things were happening and you pointed out this is happening and they're like, oh well, we're gonna move out of this school. So we're just not gonna mess with it. Right at the time that this was going on a new school had been built and the old school was kind of

disrepair. But they were still using it and it was still going on. They still using it and they well one of the excuses was they didn't want to put any money into this old school that was going to be torn down or...

Converted at the end anyway, so they just let it go on so they just let the things go on so it was definitely an Institutional thought process when you look at that and kind of a cover-up because they didn't tell the parents or anything about this They're just like no, we're not gonna deal with it because we're going to the new school

At the same time, the students were definitely aware of it because some of this damage that had been done had been done by the students. So that they could see into the other ones changing room.

I have to say when I was in high

We weren't a very big school.

when you went into PE, you always had to change clothes, and there really was no place except for you changed in front of everyone. There was just a big bench. I mean, you could go into the bathroom stall, but then you got the toilet in there and it's just not easy. we actually, when I was in school, we didn't even have a place to keep our clothes. We had this one room where everyone stacked their clothes in a little school

square and you know anyone can go in there. I felt uncomfortable just changing in front of the other girls.

It opens the students up to exploitation in a lot of different ways. Yeah, this is off the subject. I had a girl go in and steal my shoes and she came to me and says look,

have your shoes on it. I'm like, are you kidding me? I was so mad. I went and bought a padlock.

She probably could have just cut that off. That was one of the things that really blew me away. I know of one situation that happened The the basketball team, they had

The coach of course and then they had assistants one of which was like a physical therapy assistant The physical therapy assistant was female and of course all the male basketball players and There were definitely rumors about how I'm sure how she was having relationships with a number of the basketball players and the thing was again

she was an adult in there, you know high school students. I think that comes down to not to interrupt you but it comes down to also is Sometimes this is not reported because if you look at it from certain points of view the guys were like we're studs know if a woman or a girl is doing it then she's kind of a slut, right? So there's those stereotypes this doesn't necessarily stick with just you know, male on female

Look at over the number of years where the Boy Scouts had Sexual complaints of Boy Scout leaders and you had the Catholic Church ⁓ with the priests and a lot of those were Catholic schools in which the boys were being taken advantage of So it doesn't necessarily stick with just one male female no goes all ways

I can tell you that from experience myself and from talking to other women, I don't know of a single woman or maybe even of a person that hasn't had some kind of sexual something happen to them. And almost none of it goes reported. And so if you're starting this in school, even elementary or middle school, sometimes it just doesn't stop, it just keeps going.

Well, and that is really probably the bigger issue is the fact that

These situations don't get reported and we talk about it being a control or authority and the younger embarrassed the younger victim being groomed It sets up an unrealistic or a false sense for them of what relationships are about and so now you have ⁓ a Person who is more likely to reoffend because it has happened to them and then Happened to them or someone's gotten away with it so many times. It's

They just feel like there's no way they're going to get caught or they feel like this is normal. Yeah, you know is they don't know any difference because this is what happened to them and so it's okay and they can go on and now you have a society in which people just continually perpetrate the same activity over and over. I remember even the Bise's they were saying that with some of the kids that they had, you know fostered that the one girl came to them and

said you know I didn't know that it was possible to have just a friendship or a man in your life that wasn't after something else and that's just so sad. is because a lot of females do experience that during their lifetime especially when they're in a foster care situation or where the

People that they look to for authority are not related to them Don't necessarily always have their best interests at heart by any means. They don't know who they can trust or if there's anyone they can trust So kind of going back to those statistics the numbers are alarming but there's also some statistics in there that talk about the percentage of offenders

And when you look at that percentage of offenders, it's actually relatively low.

So talking about the there's about 1.2 % of public school teachers who were accused of misconduct sexually over a four year period.

That doesn't mean that they were guilty. That just means that they were accused. So 1.2 % relatively is a very tiny number. At the same time, we have to counter that with we know that it's very much reported underreported. Right. who knows how much is really going on. Exactly. Because I can say from experience and every girl I've ever talked to, every one of us has had something. I'm not saying it was always in school, but I don't know of a single

that hasn't had something happen to her. And that's not saying all of the people has had it happen, I just don't know of it. Okay, and so 58 % was non-contact, so that means comments, messages, exposure. 32 % was physical contact, touching, fondling. Less than 10 % was more severe. Coercion, exploitation,

several different ways in which coercion can come about.

So one of the ways that some students can be blackmailed is they have already put out nude pictures, something like that, and then you have a...

Perpetrator getting possession of that they basically say well, I'm gonna release this Yeah, unless you do what I want you to do are in control. Sometimes they will affect grades I mean, we've all seen the high school movies or something like that, know the teenage coming-of-age movies that are out

Easy A is actually the title of one of those and basically implies that the girl's gonna sleep her way to Getting a good grade right

But that kind of methodology can be used to obviously entice students to do things that they shouldn't be doing. Well, and unfortunately in today's day, everyone has a cell phone it seems like or a high majority. ⁓ If you happen to do something like that, say you do it one time, but if the wrong person gets a hold of it, you feel like you're ruined.

say you're a

who did something like this one

Suicides happen because someone gets a hold of that picture and they blackmail them saying, if you don't do what I want,

they're going to release it. And this child feels like their whole life is now ruined and they don't feel like they have an out. And so it's so unfortunate how many kids commit suicide over something like this. They start feeling very hopeless and well, even in a relationship like this, if you want to call it.

that Not only does it change their perspective on how they view relationships and sex But once they start feeling ashamed it can really put them into depression Feeling bad about everything that they've done it can have a very significant effect on how

student or a young person looks at the rest of their life. Very hopeless.

And even though

we're focusing on teachers doing it to students In the schools these days it's students and students too you're in a relationship with somebody you do something all of a sudden that relationship falls apart guess what then you can now be blackmailed or Coerced into all kinds of things. we see these headlines across the nation with all kinds of situations whether it be

on student, teacher on student. Actually there was a couple of headlines just recently about a mayor of a town down in

she supplied alcohol to her son's friends.

And then ends up having inappropriate relationship with one of the son's friends at this alcohol fueled party and

she was in her late 40s ⁓ Having sex with these teenage boys supplying them alcohol and she's a person that is supposed to be in a respectable position, of course We hear about those kind of things with all kinds of people you would expect to be respectable

like the priests or preachers, I've heard of preachers, I've heard of just about anyone really, that you think that this is a trustworthy person, that they would never hurt you, and all of a sudden you find yourself in the middle of this big scandal,

we have to remember that every profession out there is really made up of a cross-cut of society And when you look at society as a whole you are definitely gonna have your good people your bad people and everything in between And so whether they're a doctor a lawyer a mayor a politician Police officer a fireman Medical, you know, they are definitely gonna have good apples and bad apples

that's part of what this podcast is about is walking the blue line You were in the law enforcement field our daughter now is it's like it's true There's good and bad in everything. So you're have bad police officers, but that doesn't mean that every police officer is bad There's good teachers. There's really bad teachers. you can't just

form these opinions that just because you're in that field that you're just a horrible person. You're just

out to get someone. Unfortunately, it does happen, but the majority, like we said, is not. everyone has their weakness, right? Is that we see people that throw their lives away every day for something, whether it be a sexual affair or drugs, alcohol.

People in respectable positions they get caught doing things out of all the years that I spent at the sheriff's office I saw more Deputies get fired or get in trouble for having sex on duty or inappropriate Relationships then I saw any other reason probably the second reason would be alcohol related for DUI I was just getting ready to say alcohol is such a big

you see a teacher out there that has now Committed this kind of crime it appeals to the headlines because that's not what the public expects true

On the flip side, also we had some friends that had a boy school.

And the reason they said that they had a boys school is because of all the stuff that the girls that would come in, they didn't want to deal with it. They said that when they were trying to deal with girls and boys, that the girls were just like, ⁓ they would call rape at the drop of a hat. And then the guy, whether he did it or not, could be ruined and be shut down. So they decided to stick with just all boys. Yeah. False accusations definitely can hurt someone's career, life,

Put them in a in a bad place for sure ⁓ and Regardless of what the truth is there's always a number of people out there that are never going to believe it didn't happen or that it did happen and I definitely saw that through a number of investigations where the family would never accept that

Person we've arrested committed this crime, you Or wouldn't even necessarily be family could be friends,

They just don't want to accept that the people they know can be responsible for these kind of things and again at the same time There's gonna be a portion of the public that'll never accept that they didn't do it once they've been accused It's impossible to get it all 100

I was gonna give advice to Parents especially because they got to keep an eye on their kids You know watch your child's cell phone seems like the majority of these instances have been found out because someone saw a video a photo Something on the cell phone

As well as what other things can you think of? definitely

try to watch what they're doing online whether it's the apps they have and who they're interacting with. They do have some new

apps

out there that can help you put controls on

cell phones

you give it to your child I Think that cell phones can be really good as far as tracking your child knowing where they're at But they can also be really bad as far as who it allows them to talk to or who is disguising themselves as somebody else Yeah, you definitely have to be just in tune with what's going on when your kid look for the unusual things I know that in behaviors the behaviors if you notice something is off

in terms of depression or unusual activity as to staying after school, hanging with people, talking to people that they don't normally talk to. ⁓ I know in one of these cases that we talked about

The teacher had actually purchased a burner phone or a cheap phone for the kid to be able to communicate back and forth So he wasn't even communicating on his own cell phone He was communicating on one that the teacher had purchased so, be on the lookout for something like that Does your child show up with a? Cell phone that you're not familiar with and ⁓ it belongs to a friend or something like that So you have to kind of be willing to get into

their space a little bit in order to keep them safe. Yeah there's a thing of privacy but there's also a thing though where you need to know what your kid is doing and what they're into and and I realize it's impossible to know every single thing your kid is doing or where they're at you do have to try your

I know it's kind of a joke amongst many parents. It was a little bit of a joke with us too, is that, you know, we had three girls. By the time we got to the third one, we were tired. was just like, she probably got away with a I know she got away with a lot more. staying on top of them isn't easy and we certainly understand that. definitely don't know how these people with lots of kids in their family do it because it's exhausting just to

I remember trying to

what apps are they

using? It's hard.

I just feel for the victims because I do know from, talking to other

if it does happen to

and you

don't want to report it because you're embarrassed. You don't want anybody to know. You want to sweep it under the carpet and pretend it never happened. Yeah, I think that what I would say to a lot of the parents out there is, be supportive of your children. If they come to you

with a concern take it seriously be supportive and help them through this because if this goes to a full police investigation trial and such is a very long road it's an embarrassing road and ⁓ it's definitely weighs on the victim more than most people ever

I guess solution if there is any is just making sure that the victims are empowered to be able to speak up as well as those that are in authority are willing to come forward if they know something about someone else and that would be one teacher telling on another teacher if they witness it or the school administration being willing to do something if ⁓ a situation comes to light.

we hope that today's

Podcast has been a little bit informative for everyone out there in terms of what we're seeing in the media versus What is actually going

well to all of you out there we would say God bless and take care.