Copyright 1996 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.    
                            St. Louis Post-Dispatch

              January 31, 1996, Wednesday, FIVE STAR LIFT Edition

SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 1A  

LENGTH: 1259 words  

HEADLINE: COURT CRITICIZED CHILD-ABUSE POLICY; CITY SCHOOL BOARD 
RECEIVED WARNING IN 1991  

BYLINE: Martha Shirk Of The Post-Dispatch Staff  

BODY: 

   In 1991, the federal appeals court here warned the St. Louis 
School Board that its child-abuse reporting policy and training 
requirements left board members vulnerable to damage suits.  

   More than four years later, the district is still using the 
child-abuse policy that the appeals court found lacking. The 
School Board took the first step toward adopting a new policy 
three weeks ago.  

   The delay raises questions whether a new, stronger policy 
might have produced a quicker response in a recent sex crime 
involving a preschooler at the Wilkinson School, 7212 Arsenal 
Street.  

   In that case, Ruffner G. Bright, a child molester with a 
criminal record stretching back five decades, is being held in 
lieu of $750,000 bond. He was charged with sodomy Friday after a 
Post-Dispatch article triggered a police investigation into his 
relationship with a 5-year-old child who goes to Wilkinson.  

     For 2 1/2 years, Bright, 69, had been acting as a surrogate 
parent for the child, whose parents are immigrants from Vietnam 
and speak little English. In November, he accompanied the child's 
class on a field trip and represented the child's family at an 
hour-long conference with teachers and the school principal.  

   Superintendent David J. Mahan took responsibility for the 
four-year delay in changing the child-abuse policy.  

   "It was my understanding that those changes had been made in 
91-92," he said Tuesday. "I was wrong."  

   But Mahan said that speedier action on the district's child-
abuse policy would have had no effect on the Bright case.  

   "We've had a policy on child abuse and neglect since 1990, and 
whenever they suspect something, principals report it," he said.  

   Mahan said that steps taken by Thomas Stenger, former 
principal at the Wilkinson School, last spring to report Bright's 
involvement with the child complied with the current policy and 
the proposed policy. 

   After being given a stack of old Post-Dispatch articles about 
Bright's past, Stenger made a report to the child-abuse hot line 
in June. State child-abuse investigators and city police 
interviewed the child's family about his relationship with Bright 
but found no reason to take further action.  

   "Tom Stenger did what he was supposed to do," Mahan said. "I'm 
not trying to place blame, but DFS (the Division of Family 
Services) reported back to him that they did not see any reason 
to take any action. There were no indication coming from parents 
or anyone else that there was any inappropriate action occurring 
at that particular time. The whole issue was Bright's past 
behavior."  

   In 1984, Bright had been barred from another city school, the 
Garfield School, after a reporter uncovered his criminal record. 
He had served as president of the school's PTO and been given a 
desk in the school lunch room. Since then, he has had other 
convictions for sex crimes against children. Each of his run-ins 
with the law received prominent media attention.  

   The district's child-abuse rule fills half of one single-
spaced page. The proposed policy, set for a vote Tuesday, 
occupies 2 1/2 single-spaced pages. It would incorporate the old 
rule, plus definitions of abuse and neglect and new procedures 
for reporting abuse or neglect by a school employee. It also 
would require the associate superintendent to forward a summary 
of all complaints to the superintendent and the board every 
quarter.  

   Mahan said he found out in August that the child-abuse policy 
change that had been proposed in 1991 had never been adopted. 
Notification came in a letter from the school district's 
attorney, Kenneth C. Brostron. Brostron urged adoption of the 
child-abuse rule, and another on peer sexual harassment, at the 
board's meeting in September. The proposed rules finally found a 
place on the agenda Jan. 9, where they were given a first 
reading.  

   "In light of the court's statements (in 1991), it is risky for 
the board to continue operating without a new policy addressing 
child abuse reporting," Brostron wrote Mahan in August.  

   Brostron was referring to a stern warning from the Court of 
Appeals here in a 1991 ruling on a damage claim by six female 
students who had been molested by their remedial reading teacher, 
Jimmy Lynn Tansil, in 1986 during classes at the Meramec 
Elementary School. In his third trial, Tansil was convicted in 
1987 of molesting the six 7- to 9-year-olds and sentenced to 18 
years in prison.  

   The girls claimed the board had been made aware as early as 
August 1983 that Tansil presented risks to students but that it 
took no action.  

   In a summary judgment, U.S. District Court Judge George F. 
Gunn Jr. rejected the girls' claim for damages; a three-judge 
panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals concurred.  

   The issue was not whether the children had been molested (the 
courts agreed that they had) or whether school administrators had 
earlier complaints about Tansil (they admitted to five in the 
previous 16 years.) The issue was whether board members knew of 
the previous complaints (they didn't).  

   The previous complaints against Tansil had all been handled 
administratively. They had not been reported to the police or to 
the state child-abuse hot line. 

   Three times, the school's principals had simply informed 
Tansil of the complaints. The fourth time, in 1983, the principal 
reported the complaint to Mahan, then assistant superintendent, 
who told him to investigate further. The principal ultimately 
concluded that the complaint lacked substance.  

   Later in 1983, St. Louis police arrested Tansil and charged 
him with misdemeanor sexual assault of a former student. The 
student had complained directly to the police, bypassing school 
officials. But Tansil was acquitted of the charge. He returned to 
the classroom in 1984. The six incidents for which he was 
convicted occurred two years later.  

   "Hindsight lends an increased and ominous significance to 
these prior incidents," the appeals court said. "However, under 
the present circumstances, in a school system with over 4,000 
employees, the five complaints scattered over 16 years cannot, as 
a matter of law, be said to comprise a persistent and widespread 
pattern of unconstitutional misconduct."  

   Even so, the court chided school officials for failing to make 
sure that all principals were trained about the child-abuse 
reporting requirement and that the board knew of child-abuse 
complaints.  

   The court said the board's child-abuse policy allowed "only a 
limited amount of information" to reach the board.  

   "This case clearly demonstrates the need for better lines of 
communication and an increased flow of information to the board. 
A greater flow of information will require the board to more 
quickly and vigorously act to address unconstitutional misconduct 
by its employees or else face liability in the future."  

   The court extended its warning to other school districts.  

   "The magnitude of the tragedy underlying this litigation 
compels us to sound a final cautionary note to the board and 
other similarly situated public agencies," the court said. "In 
the future, this court will closely scrutinize bureaucratic 
hierarchies which, in their operation, tend to insulate its 
policymaking officials from knowledge of events which may subject 
them to liability.  

   "This case should provide clear warning to the board that in 
the future, a defense of no liability due to lack of knowledge 
may no longer apply to a bureaucracy which continues to block 
notice to the board of allegations of sexual abuse of students 
committed by teachers and others during school-related 
activities."