Complaints against teacher ignored for years

Rape victim says Wichita school district failed to recognize behavioral pattern

? A report prepared by a former FBI agent documents a long list of complaints against a Wichita teacher that started showing up three years before he raped a middle-school student, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Earnest Overton was arrested in July 2001 on charges stemming from the 1996 assault on a 14-year-old girl. He was convicted last year of rape and aggravated indecent liberties.

The new report details a pattern of inappropriate classroom behavior and complaints by parents and teachers dating back to 1993. The report was prepared by former FBI agent Daniel Jablonski and commissioned by Randy Rathbun, the attorney for the rape victim.

Rathbun, a former U.S. attorney, provided The Wichita Eagle a copy of the report because his client is angry that school Supt. William Brooks told the newspaper last week the district pulled Overton from the classroom as soon as allegations about his behavior surfaced.

Without admitting any wrongdoing, the school district last month settled a lawsuit filed on the victim’s behalf for $365,000. The settlement was paid out of tax money and an insurance policy financed by taxpayer-supported premiums.

Jablonski’s report says parents and teachers began complaining to principals in 1993 about Overton’s conduct, which ranged from inviting students to wipe chalk dust off his pants to taking girls off school grounds for lunch — from the fall of 1993 through 1997.

During that time, the report says, the district transferred Overton to different schools at least twice, though administrators did not state the reasons for the transfers. Principals did not notify authorities about the complaints against the teacher, according to the report.

The report says the district failed to recognize a pattern in Overton’s behavior, in part because principals weren’t looking at his personnel file from previous schools.

Sedgwick County Sheriff’s Detective Kevin Bradford told The Eagle that the district should have paid more attention to the warnings. Bradford investigated the Overton case while he worked for the Wichita Police Department.

State law requires district employees to report suspected physical, sexual, mental or emotional abuse or neglect to Social and Rehabilitation Services or law enforcement.

Details of Overton’s conduct between fall 1996, the year he raped the student, and his arrest in July 2001 while he taught at a local middle school are not known.

Overton was convicted of fondling the girl in a classroom and later raping her at his house, where she sometimes baby-sat. The Kansas Court of Appeals heard his appeal last week and will rule later.

A middle school student’s mother complained to the principal in early 1996 about Overton keeping her daughter after school and taking the girl to lunch off campus, even though he wasn’t the girl’s teacher.

The principal of Haysville’s Campus High School complained to Overton’s principal in the fall of 1996 that Overton had showed up at Campus High to talk with the same girl.

Similar behavior is documented to have started as early as 1993, when he was suspended for two days for assaulting a parent at a local elementary school.

In September 1993 at Alcott Academy, a school for students who did not succeed in a traditional middle school, Principal Cynthia Rutherford issued a written reprimand of Overton that listed several complaints. Those include making flirtatious statements to students and asking some to come up and brush chalk off his pants.

Rutherford said complaints came from teachers, not from parents, but she didn’t feel it was her place to report his behavior to authorities.

“I thought he shouldn’t be with children at all, but I had no say on it,” Rutherford said. “Nobody asked me.”