WEST CHESTER A former Chester County prosecutor and a university psychology professor while in different fields agree on one thing when it comes to relationships between teachers or those in authority with students or other young people: they shouldn’t happen.
However, they do — and in fact twice in the past two weeks there have been arrests of those adults who were in a power position and who allegedly took advantage of young people.
Last week it was announced that the Chester County District Attorney’s office and the Westtown-East Goshen Police Department arrested a private school administrator and charged him with corruption of minors.
District Attorney Tom Hogan said George James Symonds, 62, was arrested and charged with corruption of minors, indecent assault, and related charges. Symonds was the Head of School and a teacher at the Concept School, a private school in Thornbury.
The teenage victim, police said, was a student at the school. Symonds, a Wilmington, Del., resident was arrested on July 3.
The D.A. last week expressed anger and disappointment in announcing yet another arrest of an adult on charges of corrupting a young person.
“This defendant is every parent’s nightmare. Sexual predators try to find a way to get access to children,” said Hogan. “Unfortunately, a Head of School is in a prime position to exercise control over and manipulate children. Children should be safe at school, not subject to sexual abuse by somebody who is in a position of trust.”
According to Hogan, Symonds had been a teacher at the Concept School since 2004 and the Head of School, a position equivalent to principal, since 2012. He previously taught at schools in Massachusetts and Delaware County. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in History from the University of Delaware and a Master’s Degree in Religion from the Lancaster Theological Seminary.
“This defendant had access to other children, both here in Chester County and in other locations,” Hogan said. “As always with a case like this, we are concerned that there may be other victims. Anyone with information should come forward to the police so that the defendant can be held fully accountable.”
And on Thursday, West Chester Police announced the arrest of an English teacher at the Collegium Charter School in Exton. She is charged with having a physical relationship with a 17-year-old student.
Katie L. Cross, a 31-year-old English teacher at Collegium and a resident of the 1200 block of Monroe Avenue, Phoenixville, is charged with institutional sexual assault, unlawful contact with a minor, corruption of minors and endangering the welfare of children. She was arrested and released on $150,000 unsecured bail.
Officials at Collegium said the teacher has been suspended until further notice.
Also, a former Chester County high school teacher was led from a courtroom in the Justice Center in handcuffs Tuesday after he pleaded guilty to having sex with a student of his who said she looked to him as a mentor, only to fall prey to his advances.
For Common Pleas Judge Patrick Carmody, the emphasis on the adjective “former” was appropriate.
“The activity with (the girl) says that you were not meant to be a teacher,” Carmody told Mark Hostutler before the defendant was taken from his courtroom by sheriff deputies to begin serving a prison term in the case. “It’s a good resolution — you’re not going to be a teacher anymore.”
Hostutler, 35, of East Goshen pleaded guilty to charges of corruption of a minor and endangering the welfare of children. As part of a plea agreement accepted by Carmody in the case, he was sentenced to three to 23 months in Chester County Prison and three years of probation.
Hostutler was a well-respected English teacher at Coatesville Area Senior High, where the victim was one of his admiring students seven years ago, when the assaults took place.
So how do these things happen? What can be done to prevent them?
Elizabeth Pitts spent 15 of her 20 years in the Chester County District Attorney’s Office in the Child Abuse Unit, where she prosecuted several high profile cases involving teachers and coaches involved with students. She retired from that position as a deputy district attorney in 2013 and now is associate director of investigations at Swarthmore College, where she works with cases involving sexual assaults.
“I think that more and more, teachers are getting involved in their students’ social lives,” Pitts said in an interview Friday. “I saw this when I was at the D.A.’s office. The faculty members who are often involved in such cases are the ones that the students really like, or are really active with students. ‘He’s the cool teacher,’ or ‘She’s the cool one.’
“They hang out together, and the familiarity that develops between some teachers and some students really fosters a blurred line, and a change from being a teacher to being a friend,” Pitts said. “It’s a gradual erosion of boundaries” that can lead to crossing the line into a sexual relationship.”
Pitts said that even though teachers may not have as many opportunities to be alone with children to begin the process of “grooming” them for sexual victimization as a relative or neighbor might, they nevertheless do have some ability to share time alone with a student — before or after class, in an office or a classroom that could be locked.
“They can have quite a bit of time alone,” he said. “There are ways.”
Pitts said she could not answer, however, the “chicken or the egg” question as to whether a teacher who engages in a sexual relationship with a student became a teacher so as to have access to young children, or whether their career situation allowed that desire to grow.
“Sometimes you start to relate to students as though you were one of them, and on the other hand some people are just predators and they know they can prey on kids when they’re teachers,” she said.
“I don’t think I can speak to whether this is a trend,” Pitts, who lives in northern Chester County, said. “When I was a D.A., we’d have a couple in a row, and then there weren’t any for a while. I think you have to look at that question more carefully.” However, she said she remains taken aback when she sees arrests like those in recent weeks in the news.
“As much as there is publicity whenever there is an arrest, I am still surprised when I see another case. You’d think they would be afraid of the consequences.”
Not necessarily so, according to Jed Yalof, a professor of psychology at Immaculata University. Yalof has been at Immaculata for 31 years and is the chairman of the graduate psychology department and the coordinator of the doctoral program in clinical psychology.
Yalof said that despite the apparent intelligence of the offenders — some are professors with high-level educational degrees — or the power position such as a principal — the abuse still occurs.
And, according to Yalof, it’s not that the schools or places of employment aren’t doing their job.
“It’s hard — almost impossible to know this can happen,” he said. “No amount of vetting can prevent it. You just don’t know because you just don’t know the person well enough. You just can’t predict.”
Yalof said nowadays there is more public scrutiny of these cases and more reporting where there may not have been decades ago.
“Thing change, the world has changed,” he said. “People are more aware now and they’re more careful. People are more willing to talk about it and discuss it now than perhaps many, many years ago.”
So why do adults get involved with younger boys and girls?
Yalof said there’s no clear answer or single reason.
“People in these positions of power or authority take advantage of their subordinates,” he said, “and that person has handed over their trust. With the increase in power comes the potential for misuse.
“People are also vulnerable,” he added, “and there may be stressors in their life that makes them even more vulnerable. That’s why teacher training is important in making educators aware of the risks and responsibilities.”
And while Yalof said that these incidents are low in numbers it doesn’t make the fallout and less devastating.
“It’s not a high percentage and you can’t anticipate it,” he said. “So the best you can do is strengthen your vetting methods.”