Midlands police arrested a principal for failing to report child abuse. Should they have?
In late January, when the parents of a student at her school informed her of an alleged incident between an afterschool leader and their child, Tina Shaw called the school’s human resources director.
Shaw, the principal of Green Charter School of the Midlands in Irmo, believed the parents were leaving their meeting at the school to file a complaint with the police against Sulaymaan Benoit, an afterschool teacher who they said inappropriately touched their child.
The response was swift — the school informed Benoit that allegations had been made and that he wasn’t to return to the school the same day parents made the initial complaint. In the days that followed, Shaw and the school’s human resources director, Dawn DeBoer, worked alongside the school resource officer to compile surveillance footage of the incidents.
But almost a month later, on the day police arrested Benoit and charged him with eight counts of criminal sexual conduct with a minor, police also arrested Shaw. In her arrest warrant, police cited a failure on Shaw’s part to report child abuse to law enforcement, a requirement of mandatory reporters such as educators and hospital staff, among others.
Internal emails and documentation from the school and arrest warrants from the police show the timeline that led a longtime educator to be arrested for failing to report child abuse — a legal gray area in which the school thought it was working with police before seeing its principal charged with a crime.
The law is murky
By strict interpretation of the law, Shaw was required to report the incident to police, regardless of whether she thought it was being reported by the parents, attorneys familiar with mandated reporting rules said.
But it’s tricky – there’s no timeframe for when mandated reporters are required to inform police of suspected abuse and police officers often practice discretion as to who they arrest and charge. Parents told Shaw about the alleged abuse on Jan. 30, but she didn’t disclose that information to law enforcement officials until Feb. 6, when officers showed up to interview her.
Shaw was working closely with the HR director for the charter school, which is headquartered in Greenville. She’d been an educator for nearly two decades, according to her Linkedin, and had led Green Charter as its principal for more than two years.
“The [defendant] notified the school’s human resources director and operations manager; however, she did not immediately report the allegations to law enforcement,” according to the arrest warrant.
The day after parents initially reported the abuse to Shaw in her office on Jan. 30, they returned to the school and told her they’d reported the situation to police, according to internal documents from the charter school provided to The State via a public records request. Incident reports from the Irmo police department confirm the timeline – after parents left the school around 9:45 a.m. on Jan. 30, police logged a report related to the incident at 11:38 a.m.
Throughout the day on Jan. 30, the school never heard from police officers, internal emails from the school show. Shaw asked DeBoer, the school’s HR director, if she could postpone informing the school resource officer because she “wanted to ensure all information was kept confidential until we had more information about the incident.” DeBoer told her that was OK.
When Benoit showed up for his shift that afternoon, Shaw told him about the accusations against him, he packed his things and left the school. He was placed on administrative leave that day, internal documents show.
Why police made the arrest
Irmo police made the decision to arrest Shaw, in part, because of her failure to report the incident following the Jan. 30 meeting with parents, Police Chief Bobby Dale explained. But Dale said Shaw also failed to inform them of another student who came forward about alleged abuse while she was collecting witness statements about the first reported incident.
Dale said if it weren’t for the failure to report the second student who came forward, police might’ve exercised discretion to not arrest Shaw. But Shaw’s failure to inform police, or the parents of that child, factored into the decision to arrest her.
“Mandated reporters are just that, mandated,” Dale said, in a press release announcing the arrest. “Telling your human resources department does not absolve you of this duty.”
There’s little data on the occurrence of arrests made for failing to report suspected child abuse, but, anecdotally, it’s relatively rare and typically reserved for high-profile or egregious cases, such as the Pennsylvania State University scandal involving football coach Jerry Sandusky in which three school officials were charged with failure to report abuse.
Those who are mandated reporters — teachers, doctors or nurses, and lawyers, among others — aren’t required by law to attend training on what’s required of them as mandatory reporters, but are encouraged. The training typically covers ramifications for failing to report abuse, lawyers familiar with the classes said. All staff at Green Charter Schools receive annual mandated reporter training, officials for the school said.
