A high school teacher with the Lake City Michigan school district was allowed to retire and received six weeks of pay plus a $50,000 stipend after a report accused him of sexually assaulting one of his students when she was younger. But that is only half of the story. The American Federation of Teachers Union (AFT) and the school district do not want the story getting out and filed for a restraining order against Project Veritas (PV) to keep them from releasing their undercover piece. The order was granted last year, but was recently lifted by District Court Judge Linda Carter, who also denied another emergency request to stifle the conservative group’s news.
Carter said that AFT “cannot show that its commercial interests are more fundamental” than the First Amendment rights of Project Veritas.
Union president Randi Weingarten was not happy with the decision and said they would continue to fight “unethical and unlawful smear campaigns against educators.”
Undercover Project Veritas reporters obtained records and information regarding the alleged misconduct. The teacher, who is unnamed, since no chargers were ever brought against him, dated the mother of the student several years prior, which is when the incident reportedly happened. It wasn’t until the student entered high school and had him for a teacher that she claimed to have memories resurface.
PV spoke undercover with Johnny Mickles, a field rep for AFT Michigan. Mickles told the reporter that the teacher was terminated, but they allowed him to resign without pressing charges. The teacher can still teach elsewhere if he wants since charges were not filed and his credentials were not confiscated.
“He knows what he did,” Mickles told PV. “If he did something inappropriate, he knew it came back on him, he wanted to run.”
The teacher obviously says the claims are false, and set up his conditions for ‘retiring’ from the school district:
“I said, ‘I’ll retire,'” the former educator said. “‘And here’s the conditions: I want this much pay until this date.’ And I went to the attorney, for the school’s attorney, the teacher’s union attorney, and they said ‘we’ll pay you to this date and we’ll each go our own way.’ I said ‘that’s fine.'”
While PV kept the identity of the teacher obscured because he was never officially charged, they did get a chance to meet with the man. “Oh Lord, you know what I taught?” the teacher told a PV reporter. “I taught health. You know what that means? I taught sex-ed, dude, to middle schoolers. I’ll tell you what, as a male… I had other teachers that – Better you than me. Because, man you gotta be careful.”
If this teacher is guilty, he has gotten away with it. In either case, the school district does not want even a hint of what happened getting out – paying off an alleged child molesting teacher. James O’Keefe, the founder of PV, was happy with the recent decision regarding the restraining order denial and said this in a statement:
“This decision, following the suspension of two [New Jersey Education Association] presidents, is a victory for both journalism and for the First Amendment. Why exactly has Randi Weingarten and Michigan AFT worked so hard — using both legal threats and ad-hominem attacks — to silence journalists at the expense of parents and families who deserve to know what’s really going on in their school districts?”
Weingarten also released a statement in response to the court decision, defaming PV and claiming the non-profit organization is lawless an unethical:
“It’s ironic that on national Teacher Appreciation Day, while the AFT is in Puerto Rico as part of our Operation Agua work delivering water filters to ensure that thousands of children and families have safe, reliable drinking water, Project Veritas is promoting its work to try to smear teachers and their unions. We are disappointed in this ruling, but we’ll keep pursuing every possible legal avenue to protect Michigan students and teachers from Project Veritas’ unethical and unlawful smear campaigns against educators. While the group notorious for doctoring videos continues to promote footage of our teachers that it gained in direct violation of Michigan law, we’ll continue fighting for the safe, well-funded classrooms that Michigan’s kids deserve.”
Michigan kids deserve to be safe from their teachers as well. If this teacher is guilty, the school did a severe injustice to the student. At the very least, they should have charged the teacher and let the decision be made in court. However, mainstream media would rather focus on PV’s “unethical” approach to obtaining news, claiming they make up stories, lie and defraud the public instead of concentrating on what this female student is going through now that her alleged abuser received money and is still free to teach other students.
17 Comments
Anonymous
4
strawmanbeater
PV must have some top secret military level software to ‘edit’ and ‘doctor’ the videos I’ve seen.
Zombee
Many of the so-called educators are actually Trump haters, indoctrinators, promoting sexual perversity, homosexuality, transgender mental disorder, mutilation and Marxist progressive ideologies. Get your kids out of the public education system ASAP at all cost.
Lee Evans
Whats wrong with this picture? SO, WHATS WRONG WITH MY HEART will help shed light on the state of our nations morality.
https://vimeo.com/208924387
bigjos18
As a teacher of 21 years, it is deplorable that anyone, male or female, thinks it’s ok to get involved with a student. Gross. Secondly, it is deplorable that the AFT is backing this person. The AFT s nothing but a mafioso for the federal government. They DO NOT represent teachers’ interests.
iacksprat
So,I’m guessing that PV is hiring clones of these union reps and giving them a script to read that will show teacher’s unions in a bad light? Yea, that’s a believable scenario!
Bridgette
And this is how cowed we’ve become. The people of that school district should have marched on the Administration building and DEMANDED to know who was abusing kids and have charges filed immediately.
But no. They are too busy gratifying themselves with the riches of our modern society.
There is no way out of this. It will continue to get worse and worse.
gerald sornee
“The teacher, who is unnamed, since no chargers were ever brought against him, dated the mother of the student several years prior, which is when the incident reportedly happened. It wasn’t until the student entered high school and had him for a teacher that she claimed to have memories resurface.”
From the story it appears there is no evidence to support the #metoo former student. So why should a man’s life be ruined on the basis of formerly ‘suppressed memories’.
Chris King
from YOUR story, it seems that you don’t want to investigate the situation and just call the “teacher” innocent.
A Guest
Remember the McMartin preschool?
Anthony Snyder
It doesn’t even matter if the PA is a tabloid rag, the fact that the AFT (a decidedly left-wing organization) chose to work hard to hide the matter coupled with the fact that the accused refused to defend himself in the situation is extremely telling. I fail to see how teaching health class has anything to do with anything. I attended health class in Lake City High School and the female teacher (and male substitute) had no problems presenting the curriculum professionally. Having dealt with the school, I believe this situation is an exception rather than a rule, but it still ticks me right off. This is a pleasant, conservative little town, with nice people in it. We need clowns like this guy, and groups like the AFT like we need a fresh hemorrhoid. I’ll be looking into this further, you can believe that.
Joatmoaf
The teacher wasn’t officially charged with anything, so to “defend himself” would have been the worst thing he could have done.
I’ve sat on a few jury’s and discovered that the most effective defense of the accused is for them to say nothing.
As it stands, I wouldn’t be inclined to declare him guilty just yet. Not with the limited information I have of the situation.
The Law is what it is. Sometimes we like the how it works, sometimes we don’t.
Anthony Snyder
These are valid points. The information is vague and non-specific. (Which may be to the betterment of all parties) I mean, I didn’t like some of the people my parent dated when I was a teenager. I also didn’t like the really di*kish attitudes of several of my teachers when I was a teenager. (Teachers that others held in high esteem for some reason) The overall actions of the AFT, and the flippant, juvenile attitude I sense in the quoted statement of the accused still don’t sit very well with me.
Joatmoaf
I agree.
The AFT didn’t care if he was guilty or not, they just wanted to keep their reputation from being tarnished. That’s all they cared about, and the point of this article, as I’m sure you know.
It’s just a sad state of affairs when they are supposed to have the well being of their students as their top priority then something like this comes along and they get into a panic about public perception of themselves.
The 1st thing they should have done was try to find the truth. Then take it from there no matter the consequences.
Like you, I don’t find fault with the teacher or student until I know more, but the AFT’s handling of the situation was PR disaster. The exact opposite of what they hoped to achieve,
Peter Paraguay
It’s like the notorious quote was from Albert Shanker, President of the Teachers Union (United Federation of Teachers) from 1964 to 1984 as well as President of the Teachers Union (American Federation of Teachers) from 1974 to 1997. “When school children start paying union dues, that ‘s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.”
Teachers unions (and all unions for that matter) do not care about the well being of children, just how much money they can collect in their union coffers and buying political clout.
Chris King
“progress”.
Jack Bannister
I’m so glad that groups like Project Veritas exists. So much nastiness would have remained buried if it wasn’t for this group.