UGA to fire professor who hid sex crime

The University of Georgia is firing a tenured special-education professor who served jail time for sex crimes and hid it from the university, a university spokesman said Thursday.

Cecil Fore III, 50, an associate professor in the College of Education, was to be terminated by the university’s president, Michael F. Adams, according to university spokesman Tom Jackson. The university will continue with formal tenure revocation proceedings later, Jackson said.

Fore checked on a security clearance form provided by the university that he had never been convicted of a crime, and university officials said they confirmed that Fore had served time in an Alabama prison.

Fore was convicted in 1991 of sexually abusing three special education students in Montgomery junior high schools where he was a teacher, according to records in a related civil suit in U.S. district court. Alabama records show that his teaching license was revoked by the state in 1991.

Fore served almost three years in an Alabama prison from 1991-1993 on sex charges, said Brian Corbett, a spokesman for the Alabama prison system.

Fore lists on his resume that he taught special education in Alabama public schools from 1979-1992. His resume also says that he was an instructor at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale from 1997-1999 while working on a doctorate degree. Southern Illinois confirmed the degree.

Fore came to UGA from Troy State University in Alabama, where the human resources department confirmed that he taught in the department of psychology and education from 1999 until resigning in 2001.

UGA hired him in 2001 and granted him tenure last year, Jackson said.

As of Jan. 1, 2008, the university began full background checks for anyone being appointed or promoted, but Fore was granted tenure shortly before that policy took effect, Jackson said.

The university is confident that procedures for background checks now in place would prevent this happening in the future, Jackson said.

Fore returned a call from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday. Asked about his past conviction, he said, “I can’t tell you anything.”

His lawyer, James Cooper of Montgomery, said he planned to talk to Fore today. Cooper said he would neither confirm nor deny that Fore had been convicted of sex crimes.