Carla Benjamin, the government official responsible for protecting V.I. children from abuse and neglect, recently discussed steps underway to address problems in the public school system, highlighted in the 2023 report “A Systems Approach to Understanding Child Abuse Reporting within the Virgin Islands Public School System,” produced by the John Praed Foundation.
Commissioned by the Departments of Education and Human Services, the study sought to find out why sex abuse occurring on school campuses went largely unreported. Report author Michael Cull said the pattern became apparent after “an allegation of chronic and largely unreported sexual abuse of students by a school official.”
In an interview given to the Source on Thursday, Benjamin, the assistant Human Services Commissioner, said the study did not seek “to reinvestigate what happened but to look at what the root cause was of the apparent failure in this situation to recognize that something was wrong — earlier.”
As the head of Child Protective Services, Benjamin says she works with a coalition of public and private-sector agencies, including police, health workers, social workers, and nonprofit advocates, to identify abuse and address it. In an interview with the V.I. Source, she denied that the Praed report dealt with any specific incident.
When pressed for details about what prompted the study, she said, “Conversations with the Praed Foundation took place at the start of 2022. Whatever precipitated it would probably have been in 2021, maybe.”
Despite the ambiguity, a statement found in the Praed report said that Education officials “are aware students have, in the past, experienced unreported child abuse even from within their school professional community.”
That school official believed to be at the center of the 2023 report is Alfredo Bruce Smith, a former school hall monitor and athletic coach at the Charlotte Amalie High School. Smith was arrested in 2021 after a federal investigation led to charges that he molested a student during a trip to a track meet in 2019. Further investigation uncovered a 15-year pattern of offenses involving a dozen students.
Researchers with the Praed study said they used a non-judgemental approach to elicit responses from school employees about why they thought the reporting system broke down. Study leaders sought input from 65 school personnel to take part in focus groups and anonymous surveys. Teachers, teacher’s aides, clinical staff, support staff, and administrative staff were included in the survey set. As they evaluated the findings, Cull and his team found:
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25 percent felt they might be wrong;
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25 percent believed they might face retaliation;
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16 percent said they were not qualified to identify abuse;
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16 percent said the last time they reported abuse, nothing happened;
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12 percent said they thought colleagues might get upset
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12 percent said reporting abuse might disrupt their employment
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8 percent said reporting abuse was discouraged by the school system
Once it was submitted Benajmin said Human Services and Education officials sat down to review the findings and recommendations. Internal reviews were held in different school divisions. The groups then reconvened to make sure that school staff and administrators had the same understanding about their responsibilities.
“There were meetings to go over the findings of the report,” Benjamin said. However, questions remain about the small number of school workers who answered researchers’ questions.
Reached by the Source Sunday by email, the report’s author, Michael Cull, said, “Twenty-five responded to the anonymous survey distributed by email to all staff. Our process would have been to send out an announcement of the coming survey, followed by the survey and a series of reminders. No one was excluded from participation. It was anonymous and voluntary. An additional 65 either participated in an interview or a focus group. Although the response rate on the survey was very low we felt it important to honor their feedback and include it in the report.”
It is required by law that child abuse be reported by educators, medical workers, social workers, and other mandated reporters. VIC Title 5, Subsection 2539 says mandated reported — including school personnel — “must report abuse, sexual abuse and neglect.”
“Any person, official or institution required by this subchapter to report a case of alleged child abuse, sexual abuse or neglect, or to perform any other act, who knowingly fails to do so, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor,” the statute says.
Penalties for failing to report include $500 fines and up to one year in jail. The head of Child Protective Services said she had never heard of one instance where the law was invoked against personnel who failed to follow the law.
Women’s Coalition Director Clemma Lewis said she and others have spent years informing educators about the law at workshops and professional development sessions. “Why aren’t we holding more mandated reporters responsible?” Lewis said. “I don’t know any who would be held responsible in all my years of doing this work.”
Since the Praed report produced its findings, Benjamin says her agency has stepped up training for mandated reporters. She added that more are being planned.
“The trainings that we have planned will definitely be helpful,” she said, adding that the law as it stands, “pretty much says as long as you are reporting in good faith in protection of a child you can’t be sued. There are a lot of protections and unless you are immersed in the world of the statutes you probably won’t know unless somebody provides that information.”
In 2024, child abuse trainings sponsored by Child Protective Services have involved school security officers, National Guard volunteers, Head Start pre-school personnel, and staffers at the V.I. Housing Authority.
“We do trainings all the time. Internally we just did trainings for the Office of Head Start. I had a whole week of pre-service training at the start of the school year on Sept. 3 we did virtual training for the entire police department … We conduct trainings a lot,” the assistant commissioner said.
One of the future trainings planned is for principals and assistant principals. Benjamin admitted that top school officials have largely been left out of the loop regarding mandated reporter training.
“Those are a part of the trainings that we are about to bring about online. Those happen sporadically,” she said.
