A couple of weeks ago, in Montana, Judge G. Todd Baugh announced that he intends to stay on the bench, despite public outcry and demands for his resignation. The reason for all of the protest is quite simple: in 2008, a teacher at a Montana high school, Stacey Dean Ramboldt, had sex with a fourteen year female old student. The judge insisted upon acting as if the student, rather than the teacher, was on trial. He even stated that the fourteen year old had "control" of the situation. Eventually, the girl committed suicide, eliminating herself as a witness and clearing the way for the defense to garner a very light sentence for Ramboldt......thirty days in jail. Judge Baugh's dingbat apology can be heard in the video below.
Another fourteen year old student was abused in the Midwest. A Frankfort Kansas guidance counselor, by the name of Tom Schroeder, abandoned a female high school freshman along the highway, four miles south of the school and the town of Frankfort. When she got lost, attempting to find her way back to school, she stayed lost all afternoon. Tom Schroeder did not notify law enforcement, or even call the parents. He proceeded to look for her by himself, unsuccessfully. Some young men eventually happened upon the missing high school freshman and brought her back to Frankfort a few hours later. Despite the fact that contracts for teachers in Kansas prohibit the commission of any crime while employed as a teacher, Tom Schroeder's Frankfort parents and other community connections have mattered much, much more than the safety of the children in his charge. The local unified school board, USD 380, went ahead and "unified" into an action to retain the services of Tom Schroeder despite his ineffective presence at school. Because kidnapping and unlawful restraint are very serious crimes, and because Tom Schroeder admitted to the local school board and to the superintendent that he did, in fact, leave a fourteen year old alongside the highway by herself with no authority to do so, (how would any teacher gain authority to do a thing like that?) his contract as an educator was breached. At the very least, he should be terminated as a school employee, and we all know that anyone whose parents did not donate large amounts of money to the unified school district would probably have been charged with criminal actions and tried.
All of the "Frankfurters", and others from surrounding towns who make up USD 380, who are on the school board, or who teach or work in administrative positions at the school, have a mandatory responsibility to alert Child Protective Services when someone recklessly endangers or kidnaps a child, and also when someone neglects a child. Child Protective Services, however; had not heard about the incident involving the abandonment of the fourteen year old freshman until her parents made the report. So we know, for a fact, that those who work at USD 380 do not do their jobs completely unless they "feel like it". Judge G. Todd Baugh, in Montana, had a responsibility, as well, to alert the appropriate authorities, especially when he discovered that a child had been sexually abused. Instead, he blamed the child. Even the Frankfurters in Frankfort Kansas blamed the high school freshman for not knowing the area! (she had but recently moved to Kansas) Unfortunately, the list of things that these two travesties have in common does not end at the age of the victims and the reactions of the justice system, but extends to the fact that both teachers are still free to endanger children, with the Frankfurter Kansas specimen benefitting from employers who deliberately cover for him, a crime in and of itself.
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