That would probably one of my main pieces of advice looking back on it you know, if
there's red flags there are red flags you know.
Don't think they're pink or slight shade of white reddish pink.
Okay, if there's something that needs to be asked, it needs to be asked.
There's a Milford area school teacher in hot water tonight accused of an inappropriate
relationship with a former student.
Teacher accused of touching a young student inappropriately.
A former Indiana teacher is accused of using a student's prize in a school auction as a
way to get closer to him and start an inappropriate relationship.
One eleven-year-old girl who attends this school says the band assistant touched her
inappropriately several times and right now police and the school are investigating.
And now three former educator's face charges it's happening in Woodward County here is
Morgan Chesky with how investigators track them Down.
As you might expect many people in Seymour were shocked to hear that a teacher they sat
across the table from at parent teacher conferences could have could face such serious charges.
Tonight the Highlands County school district under fire and under investigation for failing
to report possible child abuse.
Police say she allegedly sent inappropriate videos of herself to an 18 year old student.
Delaware county a school counselor facing criminal charges accused of sexual exploitation
of teenage boys and police tell us Darrell Hughes used his job to target the students.
This criminal complaint tells a minor's story about how Hughes made him feel like they were
friends allegedly buying cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs.
The facts are Mr. Hughes had the underage victims take their clothes off then took photographs
of them promising it would help launch their modeling careers.
Police say inside Hughes' home they found hidden cameras.
Then they say they found a memory card inside a potted plant.
They say when they reviewed the material it showed a young man getting out of the shower.
Neighbors are shocked at the news.
Yeah, he used to be outside cleaning up the yard I mean it looked, he kept it looking
real nice.
You never would have thought anything about him like that ever.
Four other potential victims have also come forward accusing Hughes of similar acts stories
dating between 2007 and 2013.
Prosecutors are asking any other potential victims to please come forward.
Every week there are new reports of children being victimized by adults, relatives, neighbors,
even educators.
The purpose of this training video is to raise awareness for Indiana educators and ultimately
eliminate these child predators from being a danger to our students.
The Indiana Department of Education in partnership with the Indiana Internet Crimes against Children
Task Force want all teachers to be aware of mandatory reporting requirements, red flags,
behaviors of potential offenders, and to understand how and when to make a report.
One of the challenges we encounter is that many people think I would recognize a sexual
predator, I would recognize a child molester.
You're not going to be able to reliably identify a child sex offender simply by looking at
them.
You have to think about and have the training and the experience to understand what behavior
you observe.
You could sense the teachers felt even if they had any type of slight suspicion well,
it couldn't possibly be that because the student likes him so much.
The flags of something's going on or anger or those types of issues weren't there so
what they were seeing was, you know was producing results with these students.
The atmosphere was that he's doing such good work that we were just I think most people
would just push away and kind of doubt or anxiety that they might have even if it was
just a passing thought they would make sure it just kept passing.
People in the school environment typically wouldn't do just one thing.
It's going to be a course of conduct that we generally label as grooming.
One of things we see when someone is grooming or sexually trying to seduce a child is they
generally do that through a combination of attention, affection, and gifts.
They are going to prey on a child who either in reality or in their own perception are
not receiving that attention, affection, and gifts at home.
There were definitely things that I was doing to make them feel more comfortable things
I was purchasing things that I was offering to them.
Most of the kids that unfortunately were victims were of social economic lower class and so
they weren't having even some of their basic needs met even financially.
And so even if it was something like clothing items or cigarettes it was a way of appearing
to be cool with them and having the bond with them maybe a relationship with them wasn't
like anybody else unfortunately, that would lead to them having a higher level of trust
with me.
Darrell Hughes used a number of methods of grooming behaviors with the students at his
school.
He would provide them with gifts.
He would use his influence with the probation department to get some of these students out
of trouble.
Darrell Hughes would also take these students home with him have them do jobs at his home.
In your particular case these students came over They took showers at your house.. and,
and part of that was filmed.
Yes.
What was the method to get them comfortable enough to where they would take showers at
your house?
Having them do work where they would want to get cleaned up before I took
them out to eat.
Before I took them back home to the city where they lived.
And essentially what they're doing is trying
to slowly and systematically build the trust with that child and erode the
boundaries the child has built up of what is appropriate versus inappropriate
behavior.
Generally humans are built with a sixth sense.
We can tell when something is wrong.
When something is inappropriate.
When something is dangerous.
Some of the most significant investigations with offenders that are
victimizing multiple children in a very egregious way over a long period of time
that initial phone call how we became aware of it was someone said I almost
didn't call you, I almost didn't pay attention to this but I thought I should.
What you need to do as a school administrator is trust that intuition, trust
that instinct.
That felt like a lot of stuff had been ignored.
And a lot of stuff was ignored.
That, I think contributes to an atmosphere where this can happen.
When your intuition kicks in that something
may be going wrong and when you think about their behavior you need to start
thinking about whether we're going to need to make a report here.
When it comes to your attention that someone you've worked
with everyday, had lunch with, maybe gone out to dinner with, maybe mistreating a
child it's a really hard thing to accept and it's hard to make that report but the
point of making the report is to allow a professional to check it out.
When we conduct the investigation we are cognizant of the potential social impact
of these investigations.
The beginning of our investigations leave a very, very,
small footprint.
We're sensitive to the school environment when we approach
one of these cases.
We approach those in the vast majority of our investigations
in plain clothes without raising any suspicion that police are involved.
That way if the allegations are unfounded we can
step the investigation back down without leaving a negative impression in anyone's
minds.
I know that I passed people all the time that had some type of doubt and it
wasn't just my paranoia.
I could sense it, I could feel there was something
that was going on and so my answer to that was just trying to become even
better what I did so that wouldn't possibly want to think that that could be true.
One of the common mistakes we see the school's make is that they'll wait to
make their report to law enforcement.
They're going to try to do their own internal
investigation first.
They're going to try to identify the victim.
They're going to try to determine what the scope of
the criminality is.
How many victims there are.
How far it went, and that is a mistake, because in doing that in many cases what
they're doing is they are altering they are damaging the evidence that we need to
make those determinations.
Something that happens a lot is a report comes to a
member of the staff and they're concerned, but they're really
uncomfortable making a report so they go have the child talk to someone else and
then that person is uncomfortable so they have the child talk to two or
three people before it really gets to the phase of making a report.
That creates huge issues for the child.
Having a child come in confronting them in front of
other children is a problem.
Having the child come in and confronting them in
front of the alleged offender is a huge problem.
Confronting the alleged offender is problematic if you're not trained to
do that investigation and you're talking to a poly, you're not going to be effective
and you're going to tip them off.
I believe it would be difficult for a school administrator to conduct an
investigation like this because of the lack of training and expertise.
I could probably pick up a math book and
struggle through teaching a class and do a passable job of it but I would never approach
the level of math teacher could in that classroom.
In the same way a school administrator could
probably do what they believe is a possible investigation into alleged
offense against a child, but they would never be able to bring the expertise
that we bring to the table.
They shouldn't wait until they have absolute
metaphysical certain knowledge that there's misbehavior, because if that's
the required standard the offender is going to get away with it.
So if you have a serious question about why for example a teacher provided
cigarettes to a student you should be making that report.
Indiana law requires any adult over the age 18 to report abuse of a child if
they have a reasonable belief abuse has occurred.
Beyond that, the state also requires that certain individuals including employees
of a school facility make a report and that is to be an immediate oral report
through the Department of Child Services child abuse hotline, or to their local
law enforcement agency.
The question is what is the right thing to do?
The right thing to do is to make sure that an allegation is investigated
thoroughly and professionally.
The best case is the outcome is that the
allegation isn't true.
That's great everyone moves on.
The worst case is there's no successful Investigation, the teacher is allowed to resign.
They move on to the next school and they do it all over again, and again, and again.
Because everyone's more concerned about, will there be publicity?
Will we look bad?
than they are making sure that they protected the kids in their school and
in the next school.
Legally, if you don't report something that you're required to report you're
committing a crime.
What we would like to see happen whenever someone has any questions on if
something reportable offense or not is to just to go ahead and contact us if
something seems like it's out of the ordinary and they think there may be an
offence against the child occurring leave it to us to evaluate whether
something has happened or not.
The best piece of advice I have for school
officials who are involved in cases like this is to contact law enforcement
as soon as possible.
If you see something say something.
Allow us to evaluate the case and continue the investigation from there.