[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3347-3349]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




       PROTECTING STUDENTS FROM SEXUAL AND VIOLENT PREDATORS ACT

  Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I rise to speak on S. 474, the Protecting 
Students from Sexual and Violent Predators Act. This is a bipartisan 
bill. It is a bill I introduced with Senator Joe Manchin in the last 
Congress, and we recently reintroduced this bill. We also intend to 
offer this bill as an amendment to the Justice for Victims of 
Trafficking Act that the Senator from South Dakota was just discussing.
  This is a bill which provides some crucial protections to our 
children, and I am proud to be a cosponsor of this underlying bill. I 
am confident it is going to pass, and I certainly hope it will pass 
with our amendment.
  The bipartisan amendment I will be introducing, the Protecting 
Students from Sexual and Violent Predators Act, amends the underlying 
bill to protect even more children. That is what it does. It provides 
specific protections against convicted child molesters infiltrating our 
schools.
  I will say up front that I fully recognize that the vast majority of 
school employees would never consider sexually or violently abusing the 
children in their care. We all understand that, but we also understand 
that there are pedophiles in this country and they seek out vulnerable 
children. That is what they do. They know the kids are concentrated in 
schools with no parents around, and that is what we have to protect 
these kids against.
  I have been fighting for this for over a year now--together with 
Senator Manchin and others--and I will not stop fighting until we get 
this done. I have three very personal reasons that this fight is one I 
have taken on and I will continue with, and the personal reasons are my 
own kids. They are 14, 13, and almost 5 years old. I need to know, just 
as every parent needs to know, that when we put our child on a 
schoolbus that child is going somewhere where they are going to be 
safe, they are going to be protected, and they are not going to be 
victims, they are not going to fall prey to some of the very people who 
are supposed to be looking after them.
  Unfortunately, for too many kids that is not true today, as is the 
story of one particular child who inspired this legislation. For a 
child named Jeremy Bell, the story begins in Delaware County, PA. One 
of the schoolteachers there molested several boys and raped one. 
Prosecutors decided they didn't have enough evidence to bring a case 
against this monster. The school knew what was going on, so they 
decided to dismiss the teacher for sexually abusing his students, but 
then, appallingly, the school decided to make sure he went off and 
became someone else's problem.
  The Pennsylvania school wrote a letter of recommendation for that 
teacher, who took that letter of recommendation and brought it to the 
school he applied to work at in West Virginia. He got hired, and over 
time he became the principal. Well, these kinds of pedophiles do not 
change their ways, and he didn't change his ways in West Virginia. He 
continued to prey on kids. Eventually, he raped and then murdered a 12-
year-old boy named Jeremy Bell.
  Justice eventually caught up with the killer, and he is now serving a 
life sentence for that murder. But for little Jeremy Bell that justice 
came too late. And, sadly, Jeremy Bell is not alone. Last year we had 
459 school employees across America arrested for sexual misconduct with 
the very children they are supposed to be protecting and teaching and 
caring for. That is more than one per day. And those are just the ones 
where there was enough evidence to actually prosecute, to make an 
arrest and to pursue charges. How many others were getting away with 
this?
  Frankly, 2015 is not off to a much better start. So far we are 69 
days into the new year and there have already been 82 school employees 
arrested across the country for sexual misconduct with the 
schoolchildren in their care.
  These are not just statistics. These are not just numbers on a page. 
These are children's lives, every single one of them; such as the 
little girl whose sexual abuse began at age 10 and only ended when at 
age 17 she found herself pregnant with the teacher's child; a teacher's 
aide who raped a young mentally disabled boy in his care; a 
kindergarten teacher who kept a child during recess and forced her to 
perform sexual acts on him.
  It is hard to even talk about these changes, but they are happening--
one school employee after another caught with child pornography. 
Sometimes these images are of kids who are just 1 year old. This is 
unbelievable. It is outrageous. But it is happening.
  We in Congress have to do what we can to stop this, and we can do 
something. The Toomey-Manchin protecting students bill takes an 
important step in the direction of stopping these outrageous acts, and 
it does so by relying on two mechanisms to accomplish this. The first 
mechanism is to require schools to do appropriate criminal background 
checks so we are not knowingly hiring pedophiles in our schools; and 
the second is to ban this terrible practice by which schools knowingly 
send a letter of recommendation for one of these creeps to go somewhere 
else. They are recommending them so they become someone else's problem.
  Neither of these mechanisms should be controversial. The House of 
Representatives unanimously passed a bill in the last Congress that has 
both of these mechanisms. I am proud of the fact we have three former 
House Members who voted for this bill last year who are now cosponsors 
of our legislation, including the junior Senator from West Virginia, 
from Colorado, and from Arkansas. I appreciate their support for this 
commonsense legislation.
  Furthermore, a few months ago, every Member of the House and Senate 
except one voted for even more expansive background checks when we all 
voted in favor of the Child Care Development Block Grant bill. The 
combined vote in the House and Senate was 523 to 1. This is not 
controversial stuff.
  So what would we actually do? What does the legislation accomplish? 
No. 1, criminal background checks. Every State has some kind of 
criminal background check now, that is true, but it is pretty obvious 
that many of them

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are not adequate. For instance, too often there are whole categories of 
school employees who are not covered by the criminal background check, 
and too often States don't check all of the criminal databases that are 
available to them, and so these pedophiles are slipping through the 
cracks.
  The protecting students act requires a school district that wants to 
take Federal funds to pay its teachers' salaries to perform background 
checks on all the workers who have unsupervised contact with the 
children. That would include new hires and existing hires.
  Another reality is that many States have only recently adopted these 
background checks. They have hired employees prior to the legislation 
requiring the criminal background checks, and some of these employees 
have this kind of criminal background. Take the case of William Vahey, 
64 years old. He taught for decades at some of the world's most elite 
schools. He started in California and then started working his way 
across the country. Do you know what he used to do? He used to give his 
young students Oreo cookies laced with sleeping pills, and when the 
boys fell asleep he molested them and he photographed it. Scores of 
children were sexually abused.
  This teacher had been convicted for sexual abuse of children when he 
was in his twenties, but these school districts weren't doing a 
thorough background check so they weren't discovering these things. 
Well, the protecting students act ensures sex offenders such as William 
Vahey will not fall through the cracks. They will be discovered by a 
more thorough and rigorous background check system that our bill 
requires.
  I should also point out our bill--the protecting students act--
requires the schools to do the criminal background checks not just for 
teachers but for contractors as well--some schoolbus drivers, coaches, 
substitute teachers, anyone who comes in unsupervised contact with the 
kids. There are currently 12 States that have no such requirement at 
all. They do not check on the backgrounds of their contractors, despite 
the fact these folks come in regular contact with kids.
  Case in point: In Montana, parents got a very rude awakening 
recently. An audit of Montana's schoolbus drivers found they have 123 
drivers with criminal histories, including one driver whose conviction 
landed him on the Sexual and Violent Offender Registry and one with an 
outstanding arrest warrant.
  Running these background checks on school workers is only going to be 
helpful if it is thorough, if it is adequate. So what the Toomey-
Manchin bill does is it requires the background check include all four 
of the major crime databases that are available. There is the FBI 
fingerprint database, the National Sex Offender Registry, the State 
criminal registry in each State, and the State Child Abuse and Neglect 
Registry.
  This past August parents in Alaska learned that Alaska has an 
inadequate background check system, and it resulted in a known child 
rapist teaching in Alaska schools for 4 years. This is unbelievable, 
but this is what is happening. On August 29, Alaska State troopers 
arrested a middle school teacher in Kiana, AK. The teacher had fled 
Missouri 4 years earlier in order to escape an arrest warrant. Multiple 
witnesses accused the teacher over a decade of sexual and physical 
abuse of his own adopted children. He had raped and starved these 
children--his own children. This is unbelievable. The children 
literally had to burrow a hole in the wall and steal frozen food and 
warm it up, heat it on a furnace, just to survive.
  This monster was able to leave the State and obtain a teaching job in 
Alaska for 4 years. When asked how in the world this could happen, the 
Department of Education of Alaska explained: Well, the Alaska 
background checks looked at the State criminal registry but not the 
Federal registry. So they had no idea he was a wanton, despicable 
criminal and had such a record in other States. Had our bill been in 
force, Alaska would have been required to check the Federal registry. 
They would have discovered this before ever hiring this monster.
  This is the first part of our bill--this requirement we have these 
background checks. And again, there is nothing controversial here. The 
House of Representatives passed more expansive language unanimously in 
the last Congress. And a few months ago, as I mentioned, we had a 
combined House and Senate vote of 523 votes in favor and 1 vote in 
opposition to the Child Care Development Block Grant Act which imposes 
appropriate and rigorous background checks on those caring for our kids 
in daycare. That makes perfect sense. We should be screening out 
pedophiles from working in our daycares, but we also should be 
providing the same level of protection to kids who are a little bit 
older, who are in grade school or middle school or high school.
  There is a second part to our legislation, and it addresses this 
outrageous practice of what is known as passing the trash. This is that 
unbelievable act that resulted in the death of Jeremy Bell, when a 
letter of recommendation allowed a known pedophile to be employed in 
West Virginia.
  Our bill simply says if a State wants to receive Federal taxpayer 
money, it can't knowingly help a child molester get a job somewhere 
else. How can this even be controversial? But the fact is this is an 
all too prevalent practice, and it is long past time we do something 
about this.
  Two weeks ago, WUSA News 9 reported some shocking news on the public 
school system of Montgomery County, MD. Since 2011, 21 Montgomery 
County public school employees or contract workers have been 
investigated for child sex abuse or exploitation. The news station 
learned that the Montgomery County public school system ``keeps a 
confidential database of personnel who demonstrate inappropriate or 
suspicious behavior towards children.''
  This school system has this watch list of suspected abusers who are 
working in the area's schools, and WUSA 9 learned the school system had 
a record, a known record, of passing the trash. For example, elementary 
school teacher Daniel Picca had been abusing children for 17 years. The 
school system knew about it. What did they do? The teacher's punishment 
was to move him from one elementary school to another, again and again 
and again. There was 17 years of passing a known child molester from 1 
school to another. How many kids did he victimize?
  This has to stop. It is long overdue we do something about this, and 
there is a way we can. We can make it illegal to knowingly recommend a 
pedophile for employment somewhere else. That is what our bill does.
  Another example: Recently, in Las Vegas, NV, a kindergarten teacher 
was arrested for kidnapping a 16-year-old girl and infecting her with a 
sexually transmitted disease. This same teacher had molested six 
children--all fourth and fifth graders--several years before, but he 
did it in the Los Angeles school district. While the Los Angeles school 
district knew about the allegations in 2009, the school district 
recommended settling a lawsuit that alleged the teacher had molested 
these children. The Nevada school district specifically asked: Have 
there been any criminal concerns regarding this teacher? The Los 
Angeles school district didn't only hide the truth, they provided three 
letters of recommendation--three references--for this teacher.
  Now for those people who say: Well, the States can fix this problem 
all on their own, I ask you: What could Nevada do to protect itself 
from what teachers or school districts are doing in Los Angeles? What 
could West Virginia have done about a Pennsylvania school district that 
sent a teacher across the State line with a letter of recommendation? 
There is nothing one State can do to bind another State. This requires 
a Federal solution.
  Let me sum this up. The Toomey-Manchin bill offers a very simple 
proposition. If a school district wants to use Federal tax dollars to 
hire school employees, it has to make sure they are not hiring 
pedophiles in the process. I think that is pretty reasonable. 
Specifically, they need to perform background checks on any worker who

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comes in unsupervised contact with children, and they need to stop 
passing the trash.
  I can't believe this is even controversial. There is nobody who can 
stand here and say protections against child sex predators are not 
urgently needed, not in light of the daily revelations we are 
discovering.
  Again, this legislation has overwhelming bipartisan support. It 
passed the House unanimously. How many bills pass the House unanimously 
these days? This did. And every Member of the House and Senate except 
one voted for even more extensive background checks to protect our 
youngest kids in childcare. Can't we provide the same protection to 
slightly older kids? The legislation has been endorsed by innumerable 
child advocate and law enforcement groups, including the National 
Children's Alliance, which accredits and represents the Nation's 777 
child advocacy centers. Yet I am afraid we are probably going to have 
some opposition voiced about this legislation when we offer the 
amendment.
  Let me be clear. First, we are not opposing a mandate on the States. 
We don't have the legal authority to do that. What we are simply saying 
is if States want to take Federal funds, they need to protect children 
from violent and sexual predators. If States don't want to take those 
measures, then they can choose not to take Federal funds. If a State 
has no interest in having a rigorous system for protecting kids, well, 
that is their decision, but we don't have to send Federal tax dollars 
to pay the salaries of pedophiles.
  Let me conclude. This is a commonsense bill. It is long overdue. It 
has very broad bipartisan support. It passed the House unanimously. As 
I said, in this body, all but one Member voted for an even more 
expansive background check.
  Several Senators have voiced some specific concerns, and I am working 
with several of them. I am willing to work with Senators who want to 
find ways to constructively improve this bill, but I am not going to 
support a bill that waters down our ability to protect our kids from 
pedophiles in school.
  I hope this body will overwhelmingly adopt the legislation that 
passed the House unanimously, and we can begin to have a more thorough 
and effective process of protecting our kids.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Florida.
  Mr. NELSON. Is my understanding correct that it is the time for the 
minority?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is correct. There is 24 minutes 
remaining.
  Mr. NELSON. I thank the Chair.

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