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While the Catholic Church continues to wrestle with the ramifications of decades of sexual misconduct by some priests, another institution responsible for even more children has its own shameful record of protecting child molesters -- public school systems.

As many as 10 percent of public school students are targets of unwanted sexual advances, and the perpetrators are often popular, award-winning teachers, a new report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education states.

"Educator sexual misconduct is woefully understudied," concludes Charol Shakeshaft, the Hofstra University professor who conducted the study using student surveys. "We have scant data on incidence and even less on descriptions of predators and targets. There are many questions that call for answers."

Instead of pursuing criminal charges against teachers who admit to sexual misconduct, school officials often allow those teacher to resign, sometimes offering recommendations that allow the teachers to find jobs in other schools, the report says. That's known as "passing the trash," Shakeshaft said.

More than half of the 317 teacher discipline cases reported by the Pennsylvania Department of Education since 1993 involved sexual misconduct. The offenses of those 163 teachers ranged from downloading pornography on school computers to sexual molestation, according to state Department of Education records obtained by the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

The state revoked the licenses of 116 teachers for sexual misconduct, the department states.

The U.S. Department of Education has yet to respond to Shakeshaft's report -- or act on its call for a deeper examination of the prevalence of sex abuse by school employees. The report is still under review, said Education Department spokesman Carlin Hertz.

States such as Ohio, Colorado and North Carolina have been recognized by victims groups for enacting tough laws punishing teachers for sexual misconduct against students. Many more states -- including Pennsylvania -- have been criticized by education and victims advocacy groups for laws that apply only when students are younger than 16, the age of consent in Pennsylvania.

"You are not mandated to send your children to church, but you are mandated by law to send your children to school," said Terri Miller, board president of Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation (SESAME). "And, by God, schools better be mandated to keep them safe."

Deaf ears

Edgar Friedrichs was a few years into his first teaching job at the Interboro School District in Delaware County when sexual misconduct allegations first surfaced.

Marise Stillman said her two sons were among Friedrichs' victims at Prospect Park Elementary School in the early 1970s. When the boys told their parents what was happening, the couple unsuccessfully sought help from school officials, a local district justice and finally the school board.

She said board members told her there was nothing they could do.

Friedrichs ultimately was forced to resign, and Stillman said she didn't know what happened to him until she received a phone call almost 30 years later.

The call came from private investigator Dan Barber, who was hired to investigate Friedrichs. The detective said Friedrichs was on trial in West Virginia for sexually molesting two 11-year-old boys and might have been involved in the death of another student, 12-year-old Jeremy Bell.

Bell and Friedrichs had been on a fishing trip at Friedrichs' cabin in southern West Virginia in 1997 when Bell died of a drug overdose. Investigators found a prescription drug in Bell's system that had not been prescribed for him. They also found evidence of a head injury.

One of Bell's relatives had hired Barber to find out about Friedrichs' past.

"My worst nightmare came true," Stillman said. "When I went to the public school board meeting after I had exhausted every other resource, I challenged the school board to take responsibility for what happened from then on. They were unwilling to do what could have stopped him right there."

Interboro School District solicitor Jeffrey Sultanik declined to comment on the Friedrichs case. But he said official attitudes have changed since the 1970s.

"There are many more controls. The laws are much stronger than they used to be," he said. "We're more apt to see these issues being dealt with much more often than it would have been in the '70s when things were often swept under the rug, I suspect."

Friedrichs, 51, is serving 31 to 65 years in prison for molesting the two West Virginia boys. He is on trial in Fayetteville, W.Va., about 60 miles southeast of Charleston, in Bell's death.

During his investigation, Barber, whose practice is based in Erie County, learned Friedrichs had received a letter of recommendation from Prospect Park and had worked at six different schools after leaving Pennsylvania -- all in the Fayette County School District in West Virginia.

Barber said he found allegations of sexual misconduct made by parents, other teachers, staff members and students against Friedrichs at every school. Barber said the district would move Friedrichs to another school when new allegations surfaced.

"They simply passed the trash over the mountains," Barber said.

Fayette County Schools officials referred questions about Friedrichs to their attorneys, neither of whom returned calls.

"Child molesters ... would be logically attracted to or seek employment where they would be in close proximity of children and not be suspicious. It's logical to try to get a job at teaching," Barber said. "What's illogical and astounding is that the damn system -- the good teachers, the good guys -- all look the other way. It's a complicated problem."

Shakeshaft studied 225 cases of educator sexual abuse in New York in 1994. Every accused teacher admitted to physical sexual abuse of a student, but no one reported any of the teachers to police and just 1 percent lost their licenses to teach as a consequence of their actions.

Chester Kent, a former school administrator and expert in educator sexual misconduct, said he believes the 163 teachers who have been disciplined in Pennsylvania represent just a fraction of the number of actual incidents.

"There are many more. They just escape public scrutiny," said Kent, associate executive secretary of the Tri-State Area School Study Council at the University of Pittsburgh. "The school is able to solve the issue their way."

Even when a district does take measures, it's not enough in some cases to keep teachers away from children at other schools.

A 'classic pedophile'

In 1997, an Avonworth school board member watched as science teacher Joseph Doherty tucked his shirt into his pants after he had been alone with a student in the library.

After consulting with the district solicitor, then-Superintendent Anthony Trosan installed a hidden camera in Doherty's classroom.

"I did not believe anything would come of it," said Trosan, now superintendent at Reynolds School District in Mercer County. "One of my questions for the person who did the installation was, 'How long do you recommend we keep it on if we're not seeing anything?'"

A week later, the district had footage of Doherty wrestling with a 12-year-old boy. The district said Doherty grabbed the boy's genitals and was visibly aroused.

The district took the tape to police, who filed sexual molestation charges against Doherty, a celebrated teacher, basketball coach and president of the local athletic association. He resigned from his job at Avonworth before the school board could fire him.

District Justice Regis Welsh in 1998 dismissed the case, saying there wasn't enough evidence to try Doherty, who later left the state.

He became a teacher in Prince George's County Schools in Maryland. When that school district found out about his past, he moved to Virginia, picking up jobs at youth clubs or private schools.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education revoked Doherty's teaching license in 2001 for the Avonworth incident, but that didn't stop Doherty from finding a job.

Detective James Hardy of Fairfax County, Va., police, said Doherty chose small private schools and youth clubs because they often do not have capabilities to conduct thorough background checks. When his past did catch up with him, he'd simply find work elsewhere.

Five years after district officials in Avonworth first suspected Doherty of inappropriately touching students, he was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a 12-year-old boy from the Angelus Academy in Springfield, Va.

By then, he had moved on to his final teaching job, at the private Owl School in Washington, D.C. That school has since closed.

"The level of manipulation was incredible," said Hardy, who investigated Doherty's case. "He worked the system for a long time."

Doherty pleaded guilty last year to the Virginia charges and is serving a 10-year prison sentence.

In letters from prison to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Doherty wrote that he was ashamed about what had happened with the boy from Angelus Academy, but he denied doing anything inappropriate in Avonworth.

"My episode at Avonworth was in no way inappropriate or criminal and the current charges for which I'm serving time, regrettably and unfortunately, allow people to assume that maybe something did happen at Avonworth," he wrote. "The majority of the community supported me in 1998 regarding that incident, but due to my current situation I feel I let them down considerably and I have to live with that every day of my life."

Doherty said he never lied on any application for a teaching position, but schools would learn about his past and tell him not to return.

"I don't know what leads people to the kind of act I'm guilty of, but there was no excuse for my actions," he wrote. "I don't believe my guilt will ever go away and I truly believe I will not recommit the crime."

Attorney Robert Del Greco, who represented Doherty in the Avonworth case, stands by his defense of Doherty.

"Even a historical, revisionist, retrospective review does not validate the allegations filed against him some years ago," he said. "It simply wasn't a crime, and it was exposed as such."

A woman who answered the phone at Angelus Academy said Doherty worked at the school for a year. The woman, who did not give her name, said officials thought he was a "good teacher."

Other schools that employed Doherty did not return calls for comment.

Trosan has no regrets about the actions Avonworth took or didn't take.

"I think that we did what we had to do," Trosan said. "If I were to be confronted (with another allegation), I would have to follow the same steps again and see where it would lead."

Kent said Doherty's story is typical of a classic pedophile.

"These people resign first, and then they leave town so there is no record," Kent said. "Pedophiles are more mobile. They live another day, if not in the public school then in the private schools."

New state, clean slate

In Pennsylvania, it is illegal for a prison guard to have sex with a prisoner. But no law prohibits sexual activity between a teacher and student, said spokesmen Kevin Harley of state Attorney General Jerry Pappert's office.

The lack of a law targeting educators who sexually abuse their students is one reason Pennsylvania ranked near the bottom of a survey of state sex abuse laws conducted by the industry newspaper Education Week last spring.

In Ohio, it is a felony for a teacher to engage in a sexual relationship with a student, no matter the student's age. Five other states have similar laws; 20 states set the age limit at 17. Two states set it at 15. The remaining 22 states, including Pennsylvania, have no laws.

Allegheny County Deputy District Attorney Laura Ditka, supervisor of the district attorney's child abuse unit, said teachers who molest children older than 16 -- the state's age of consent -- but younger than 18 can still face criminal charges of corruption of minors.

Miller, of SESAME, pointed to Ohio's law as a model for other states, but Ohio does not require school officials to report allegations of misconduct or the resignation of educators suspected of sexual misconduct to the state education officials, according to Education Week. Pennsylvania is one of 18 states that does make that requirement.

Most states do require teachers to undergo criminal background checks, but those catch only teachers who have faced criminal charges for sexual misconduct. Teachers who have surrendered their licenses in other states for alleged sexual misconduct do not show up.

"It makes it possible for a person to migrate from one state to another and continue to find work," Trosan said.

States try to prevent that from happening through the National Association of School Directors of Teacher Education and Certification.

The member-supported group maintains a database of teachers who have lost or surrendered their licenses.

States are able to check the database, which contains information on 24,000 teachers nationwide, before issuing licenses to teaching candidates.

Carolyn Angelo, executive director of the state Professional Standards and Practices Commission -- the group charged with deciding all teacher certification cases -- said she is developing a Web site for the agency where school officials and the public can access decisions made by the commission.

Still, there is no national database for local school districts to determine whether applicants have been accused of sexual misconduct or have had problems with certification.

Call for a national database

A national database is one of Hofstra professor Shakeshaft's recommendations for federal legislation. Still, past legislation that would prohibit educator sexual misconduct has stalled.

Kent, of Tri-State Area School Study Council, doesn't blame any particular group for the lack of legislation, rather a lack of national attention to the problem.

"It's not in the public consciousness. This issue is far more pervasive and deeper in terms of numbers than (the priest sex abuse scandal), but it's not in the public eye," he said. "People don't see it for what it is because there hasn't been this national scandal."

In Pennsylvania, the only legislation now up for consideration is from state Sen. Jane Earll, R-Erie County, which would deny state pensions to teachers convicted of sexual misconduct.

Earll said she introduced the legislation after receiving a call from the father of a girl molested by her middle school science teacher. The father learned that the teacher, Gregory Yarbenet, was still receiving a pension check while serving time in prison.

"I just find it to be a heinous situation for a teacher to take advantage of a position of trust by molesting students," Earll said. "I introduced the bill hopefully as a deterrent. If teachers don't have enough sense, maybe this will be another deterring factor that might curb that type of behavior."

Private investigator Barber, however, said the problem isn't toughening the state's laws; it's enforcing the laws already on the books.

The problem, he said, begins with districts that allow those teachers to resign and take jobs elsewhere, police officers who fail to investigate, prosecutors who do not file charges against accused molesters and the media for not investigating the issue.

"It's an overall breakdown in society," Barber said. "There's a little blood on everyone's hands."

Stillman, the Delaware County mother, said her sons today are married and have recovered from their experience with Friedrichs. She and one of her sons testified at Friedrichs' sexual molestation trial in West Virginia and stayed for the sentencing.

"I saw them put the handcuffs on Friedrichs. I know I heard them click," she said. "My son swears you couldn't hear them, but I'm going to my grave knowing that I heard that sound I wanted to hear forever, knowing that he was going to be off the street where he couldn't hurt another child."

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