Kansas City, Mo. ? Parents and teachers started complaining about the way Earnest Overton acted around female students years before he was convicted of raping one of them.

But a failure of principals to look at Overton’s personnel file when he changed schools helped him avoid closer scrutiny from district officials, according to a report commissioned by one of the victim’s attorneys.

The former Wichita middle school teacher was one of about 80 people whose teaching licenses were revoked, suspended, denied or surrendered in Kansas from 2001 to 2005, an Associated Press investigation found.

Twenty-two of the cases involved sexual misconduct – cases that schools sometimes fail to catch early enough. All of those victims were minors and at least 16 of them were students. Three sexual misconduct cases involved child pornography.

The non-sexual misconduct cases involved a range of offenses – from breach of contract to solicitation to commit first-degree murder. Two people lost their licenses for making bomb threats.

The Kansas figures were gathered as part of a seven-month investigation in which AP reporters sought records on teacher discipline in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.