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Who We Are »
Betsy Combier

Help Us to Continue to Help Others »
Email: betsy.combier@gmail.com

 
The E-Accountability Foundation announces the

'A for Accountability' Award

to those who are willing to whistleblow unjust, misleading, or false actions and claims of the politico-educational complex in order to bring about educational reform in favor of children of all races, intellectual ability and economic status. They ask questions that need to be asked, such as "where is the money?" and "Why does it have to be this way?" and they never give up. These people have withstood adversity and have held those who seem not to believe in honesty, integrity and compassion accountable for their actions. The winners of our "A" work to expose wrong-doing not for themselves, but for others - total strangers - for the "Greater Good"of the community and, by their actions, exemplify courage and self-less passion. They are parent advocates. We salute you.

Winners of the "A":

Johnnie Mae Allen
David Possner
Dee Alpert
Aaron Carr
Harris Lirtzman
Hipolito Colon
Larry Fisher
The Giraffe Project and Giraffe Heroes' Program
Jimmy Kilpatrick and George Scott
Zach Kopplin
Matthew LaClair
Wangari Maathai
Erich Martel
Steve Orel, in memoriam, Interversity, and The World of Opportunity
Marla Ruzicka, in Memoriam
Nancy Swan
Bob Witanek
Peyton Wolcott
[ More Details » ]
 
Student Reports Teacher Misconduct and Then Is Suspended
In what world does a school not only ignore concerns about inappropriate behavior by a teacher but even suspend the student who raised them? That would be Concord, N.H., where the consequences are still unfolding five years later, with the teacher accused of rape, the superintendent and principal placed on leave, and the whistle-blower, Ana Goble, being honored at Thursday night’s annual fund-raiser for the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence.
          
   Ana Goble   
From the desk of Betsy Combier

We live in a world where someone with the power and/or authority to make credibility assumptions does not believe a child and he/she will not follow up on a report of misconduct by an adult (or peer). That is what happened when Ana Goble reported misconduct by her teacher. To make matters wors, she was suspended for what she claimed.

The current news is full of stories every day about claims people with the loudest voice make up about a person's character after that person makes a mistake, error of judgment, or complaint. Then someone else can find that mistake/error/complaint "unbelievable". Who do you believe? It's a matter of a judgment that in many cases is entirely subjective, arbitrary, and random, and is based upon some individual's implicit bias.

We have followed the Innocence Project for years. The cases that the Innocence Project takes on are wrongful imprisonment, and this group is often in the media when the innocent victim is freed after being found not guilty of a crime they were imprisoned for., often for more than 10-20 years.

But there are many cases which are never reported, and/or the media never picks up. I work in teacher discipline hearings. Every hearing in which I have been involved I see principals, coaches, assistants, and staff come in and lie about a teacher/guidance counselor/paraprofessional/child who has done something so terrible that he/she must be fired or suspended. But the charges may not be true. Or, the charges may have validity. The responsibility lies with us to sort out what is true and what is not true. This is far from easy, and most people do not realize how seldom anyone really looks into the 'who, what, where, when and why' of a complaint. This is the problem.

The right thing to do is to challenge the testimony to prove/disprove the Respondent or child did not do anything, but the arbitrator or Judge can say "I find 'Joe Smith' not credible, and zoom, out goes the Respondent or child into the trash.

And it is very embarrassing to be caught in a lie, so once a complaint is made and a "perp" found, the case is closed.

Unfortunately, lives are destroyed because of stupidity, mistake, politics, discrimination and any other wrong reason.

One way to create a difference is to take all complaints seriously, no matter what the age of the person making a complaint, and follow up with a fact-finding effort that does not end until accurate data on 'who, what, where, when and why' is collected.

Betsy Combier
Editor, ADVOCATZ.com
Editor, ADVOCATZ blog
Editor, Parentadvocates.org
Editor, New York Court Corruption
Editor, NYC Rubber Room Reporter
Editor, NYC Public Voice
Editor, National Public Voice
Editor, Inside 3020-a Teacher Trials

A seventh grader was punished for questioning a teacher’s conduct. Now that teacher is accused of rape.
By Stephanie Ebbert Globe Staff, October 9, 2019

In what world does a school not only ignore concerns about inappropriate behavior by a teacher but even suspend the student who raised them?

That would be Concord, N.H., where the consequences are still unfolding five years later, with the teacher accused of rape, the superintendent and principal placed on leave, and the whistle-blower, Ana Goble, being honored at Thursday night’s annual fund-raiser for the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence.

“All of us are certainly in solidarity with her, but we’re also there to learn from her. What she did is something that many adults struggle with every day,” said Amanda Grady Sexton, the coalition’s director of public affairs, pointing to people’s uncertainty about reporting seemingly problematic behavior. “If the adults in her life listened to her concerns, there very well could have been a different outcome in this case.”

Suffice it to say, no one listened to Goble. As a seventh-grader, she had noticed that a popular special education teacher, Primo “Howie” Leung, spent an inordinate amount of time with a select group of her female classmates, holding private lunches in his classroom and choosing them, over most others, to join him on field trips he ran for the “Student Ambassadors” program.

“He excluded other students,” Goble said in an interview. “He just acted really weird around certain girls, to the point I was so uncomfortable my stomach would hurt.”

In the fall of seventh grade, when Goble asked why she wasn’t among the ambassadors invited on those trips, Leung blamed her attitude, pointing to the Rundlett Middle School’s motto of “PRIDE” — Perseverence, Respect, Integrity, Discipline and Empathy — she said.

“He told me that I was not exhibiting enough PRIDE behavior, and he chooses who goes on these field trips or who he eats lunch with based on their behavior,” Goble recalled.

He seemed especially close with one particular girl, Goble said, so she tried to raise the issue with a friend they had in common. That week, Goble also told her mother, who suggested they tread carefully in reporting to the administration, since she had already seemingly offended Leung.

But they didn’t have time to report, they said. By morning, Goble and her parents were summoned to the principal’s office.

“Immediately, he called us in and told us Ana was spreading malicious and slanderous gossip and that she would be suspended for three days,” said Goble’s mother, Kate Frey.

The family backed off.

“Unfortunately, in hindsight, we didn’t push back as much as we should have,” Frey said. “We listened to the principal, assuming that he would have done his due diligence.”

Goble was kicked out of Student Ambassadors and served three days’ suspension, two of them in school. But the principal didn’t move her out of Leung’s classroom, and Ana soon felt he was picking on her.

“She kind of became the girl who cried wolf,” her mother said.

Goble, who hadn’t previously had problems in school, became a bitter but resigned seventh-grader.

“It seemed very out of proportion,” Goble said. “I had known people that had gotten into fistfights in middle school and had gotten a day suspension.”

But she also felt guilty for spreading gossip. So she shut up.

Flash-forward to April, when her father got a call from the Concord police.

Leung had allegedly been spotted kissing a high school student in his car. The school did an internal investigation, according to news reports, and Leung continued teaching through March. But when the Department of Education got involved, so did police, whose investigation brought them back to seventh grade.

The girl Goble had worried about back then told police she had been involved in a sexual relationship with Leung when she was 13 and 14 years old in 2015 and 2016 when he was working at a summer camp at Fessenden School in Newton. In Massachusetts, he’s being charged with aggravated rape of a child, among other charges. He has pleaded not guilty to all counts, according to news reports.

Goble’s father immediately apologized for not backing her up. And her family demanded action from the school so that the same situation wouldn’t happen again.

In an April 29 letter sent by the lawyer, Goble and her family demanded that the school district expunge her record of disciplinary action, train employees how to respond to claims of sexual misconduct, and pay her $15,000 as an acknowledgement of harm.

Their lawyer was told she’d need to sign a confidentiality agreement.

Absolutely not, the family said.

“We would never support any kind of settlement like that because that’s how we got there to begin with,” Frey said. “In order to make true change, we had to come out and tell our story.”

They spoke to the Concord Monitor newspaper in June, after the superintendent was quoted as saying she was unaware of any past complaints of inappropriate behavior about Leung — less than two weeks after receiving the letter from Goble’s lawyer.

Dean Eggert, the lawyer representing the school district, which ultimately settled without a confidentiality agreement, would not explain why the district had initially sought it.

“I can’t comment on anything that would implicate the privacy concerns of a family,” he said.

Since Goble and her family spoke out, other members of the community demanded the suspensions of the principal and the superintendent and greater transparency from the school district, which is now refusing to release its report on the matter.

The School Board’s president, Jennifer Patterson, did not respond to a request for comment.

Concord, of course, is also the home of St. Paul’s School, which rallied around student Owen Labrie when he was accused of raping an underclassman, Chessy Prout — also in 2014. But Concord is by no means special, said New Hampshire US Representative Ann McLane Kuster. No place is.

Kuster attended the same Concord schools as Goble. “A classmate of mine became pregnant from a teacher back in the 1970s,” she said. “Now fast-forward to this extraordinary young woman, Ana. She was 13 years old at the time. I just want to compliment her courage and grace.”

In 2016, Kuster revealed on the House floor that she had been sexually assaulted — three times. Thursday night, through a video tribute, Kuster will be among those honoring Goble in hopes of educating the public to recognize “a pattern of grooming behavior” that they now believe they should have seen in Concord.

“To have this happen in a school system where every child was vulnerable because administrators did not listen to the concerns — that turned out to be highly attuned — of a 13-year-old girl,” Kuster said, “is unacceptable.”

“What She Said” is an occasional column on gender?issues. Stephanie Ebbert can be reached at Stephanie.Ebbert@globe.com.

 
© 2003 The E-Accountability Foundation