False Accusations: Preventing Them
Safeguarding Your Reputation As A Teacher
While false accusations against a teacher by a student are rare, it is best to prevent them by avoiding situations where they could occur. This article shares some tips.
In today's world all it takes is one false accusation of impropriety or molestation to ruin a teacher's career forever. A misinterpreted glance, an accidental touch, or a myriad of other things can easily spin out of control. Once falsely accused the teacher's career is ruined regardless of the outcome. Many teachers carry liability insurance for just such issues, but these policies only help cope with financial and criminal litigation. There is no insurance policy that can restore a damaged reputation. This article seeks to show you very simple and common sense ways to avoid being falsely accused by a student or coworker.
The Boy Scouts of America have had a policy for decades known as “two deep leadership.” It was born of necessity not just to protect young scouts from unknown predators, but also to protect the adult leader from false accusations. The primary rule of the policy is that no adult above the age of 18 will ever be alone with a child. This prevents the uncertainty of any one-on-one contact between an adult and a child. When an allegation comes out of a one on one conversation it is at best a no win situation for both parties with no one knowing who to believe. At its worst, the character and liberty of the teacher is placed in jeopardy and the school as a whole gets a black eye.
The best way to prevent such false accusations is to not allow the opportunity for them to occur. In following the concepts of two deep leadership there should always be another teacher around to witness the events and provide another unbiased side of the story. With this immediate and unquestionable backup of the teacher's story, instances of false accusations are greatly reduced.
When you find yourself disciplining or talking to a student in a one-on-one situation consider moving the conversation to somewhere that is public yet private enough to speak with the child. In schools that have video cameras in the hallways move out of an empty classroom and into sight of the camera. In other situations you may wish to move down the hallway to a position where a neighboring teacher can see you through their doorway or window. If the conversation must be private see if it is possible to move the entire conversation to a conference room with windows or some other room that is visible by another teacher. Consider creating a simple, school wide hand gesture to inform your coworkers that you have to have a conversation with the student and you would like them to be an uninvolved witness.
Each day brings more and more news reports of teachers being falsely accused of criminal acts against children. While many of these cases may indeed be valid, it is also likely that most of them could have been avoided completely if the teachers had saw fit to guard themselves against the false accusation in the first place.
