The safety of Wisconsin's school children is under the magnifying glass after the capital
times reported on more than 200 teachers accused of sexual misconduct or grooming of students since 2018 that included teachers who were able to reapply for a teaching license according to the reporting in response come proposals for new laws and better and more transparent tracking of teacher licensing including the reasons for revocation Republican State Senator Jesse James is author of a new bill that would make grooming a felony.
And include prison time. He joins us now and Senator thanks very much for being here.
Thank you for having me. So one of the things that your bill does is set a definition for grooming and I'm just going to read it. It is quote a course of misconduct pattern of behavior or series of acts intended to condition seduce or entice a child for the purpose of sexual activity or exploitation.
How does that definition help to investigate charge and remove educators who are predators.
Well I think you know we're my the efforts on this legislation for my office started well beyond or well before I should say this story came out with DPI and the sexual misconduct of the educators.
In our state for the series of years that they were investigating.
I actually had a zoom in August with organization out of Florida that was working on this across our nation defining grooming and then further conversation took place just a short few weeks ago with colleagues.
Within the triple falls the police department. They shared in a specific case with me.
So that's when the efforts really started and then this story comes out. So I think the irony involved because this isn't just with educators. This isn't about just educators. It could be law enforcement.
It could be doctors. It could be just general citizens within our communities. So I think this story breaking out just intensifies and actually brings forth the true need of this grooming statutory language to be included in our statutes.
I think the sensitive crimes that I have investigated as a law enforcement officer having these additional tools and mechanisms available for charging is extremely valuable.
And with the amount of times that each grooming act is defined you can have a person that is charged with multiple felonies with just the grooming statute alone.
And I think when we get to the courts in the in the charging of these cases, I think more is better. It brings more negotiation. It brings more potential compromise to not drag these these cases out to a 12 person jury trial.
It brings on more plea agreements and having these people realize that you're guilty. I mean, I I've had a pretty successful career as a sensitive crimes investigator back in the day. And these, this was never available. But I can specifically think of cases where it's totally applicable because there seems to be grooming in every single type of child sexual assault case.
Indeed, what does grooming look like in practice?
Oh, my, you know, it could be as simple as being a young lady, for example, and you have a law enforcement officer somebody in a position of trust that bus underage drinking party.
And the officer says, well, no, I'll give you a ride home to your parents house and things happen.
It could be where an individual will literally pick up a young lady after school and take her out to eat out to buy a new pair of shoes out shopping, getting her her own private cell phone.
It could be goodness. It could be just, you know, the teachers in the classroom with coming up and having inappropriate touches the rubbing of the shoulders, you know, massaging type things.
The text messaging that, you know, simply saying, well, you look really nice today and, you know, flattering comments and stuff stuff that would not be normal where if I had my daughter in high school and I look at her phone and I see a text message like that, it would definitely raise concern.
Why is it taking so long for someone to write a bill that would turn into law in the state of Wisconsin on this?
That is an awesome question.
I think the traditional ways of grooming are being more like upscaled with the amount of technology that's available, the apps that are out there.
The stars or hearts or whatever it looks like on technology. This is not a technology guy by any means.
But there's ways that these individuals are targeting our youth grooming them even online and giving them the gifts or whatever, how they do it on these apps.
And I think that's why it is becoming more and more prevalent and we're seeing these true cases, even me as a part time officer in the last month.
I've had cases like this where I've been introduced to these new apps that I didn't even know what they were before.
So trying to keep up with technology today, I think that is one of the challenges in the amount of grooming that's going on through technology.
I think it's really intensified and it's dramatically increased.
And I think we need to try and stay up with the times.
You can definitely, I always try to think of it as a 12 person jury.
If a reasonable person could conclude that this is weird, not normal behavior, it is actually misconduct by a reasonable person's conclusion.
I think that's going to help define the grooming element when it goes to a jury trial. It's just taking us time to get caught up.
And I wish I would have thought about this when I first came into office because I was a sensitive crimes investigator and I just, I didn't think about it.
I'm just going to be honest with you. I didn't think about it until more recently with the sexual extortion that's been taking place.
Everything. I mean, with Braden Bohn and D.C. Edwards High School there, that young man, there was grooming that was taking place in a matter of six hours, the young man died by suicide.
So it's, I think that's the whole part of it is the intensifying increase that we're seeing in these types of cases and the impact that it's having on our children.
We need to address it.
Do you think given the gravity of this, the state will throw its weight behind this and funding to tightening up not just like the statute around grooming, but having to do with revocations of educators, licenses and making that process more transparent?
Well, I think people that are in positions of trust.
Obviously, if law enforcement officers did this, if doctors did this, if nurses did this, if teachers do this, I think they're licensed to be taken. They should be terminated immediately.
I think there will be strong support for this. The governor has already expressed his support for this.
And I think that having this extra tool available for specific crime of grooming is going to be highly beneficial for any type of case to help hopefully deviate or have these individuals that like to prey on our children think twice about it.
Should every knowing what you know and what you do and have done in your career, should every parent be worried that their children could be groomed and become victims of abuse?
I would agree with that. This could happen to anybody.
And it just simply, it depends on the state of mind how educated your children are, how involved you are in your child's life because the technology we had, like with my daughter, we'd let her have a cell phone at a younger age.
And the technology that's out there, we had a cell phone contract with her. So her phone was subjected to inspection at any time.
And, you know, when kids, kids do foolish things, adults do foolish things. And when it is so readily available today, the temptations that exist.
I think that we need to do everything possible to protect our children that are vulnerable at times. And they think that this is the wave of the future.
The amount of images that I have seen that are not appropriate for anyone to have anybody having their age of 18, you know, it's considered child pornography. And we need to get more education out there.
We need to get our families educated. We need to get our youth educated as far as what's safe, what's not safe.
And that kind of coincides with Aaron's law when we have that education available in our schools K through 12 to have some type of education for personal body and security education and truly giving our kids a voice to say,
I'm not uncomfortable. This doesn't feel right. They should be able to have discussions with whatever situation, whether it's with law enforcement, their doctors, the teachers, church personnel, any volunteers they work with.
This goes across every organization in America has been impacted by some type of sexual misconduct.
And I say that that it comes as a lot of things, but it could up to include, you know, sexual assault of a child and stuff like that. But even the minimum sexual misconduct.
I think people need to be held accountable at a higher standard in society, especially those adults that prey on our children.
And this bill soon to be law. Apparently, we'll help with that. Senator Jesse James. Thanks very much.
Thank you very much. I appreciate the conversation today.
Yeah, thank you. Thank you.
Yeah, it's sad that we even got to this point in the world, but the technology that's available. I have seen so many disturbing images and just the, the, are you being so vulnerable to take new images of themselves and just the craziness of all that is really truly eye opening.
I mean, if I see it in the small populated village of 1500 people, I can only imagine what's going on in the larger cities where there's a higher population. I mean, it doesn't matter where you live rural urban.
There's going to be people impacted. I personally know of people that have been impacted by this.
And, you know, even in my own life, I just think that's why I have a passion for trying to protect our children.
Indeed. Well, thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. All right. Have a great day.
You too.
You too. Bye bye.
You