The disturbing news reached Chante Buchenen via a robocall from the Douglas County school district. The principal at her daughter’s elementary school had been arrested. The recorded voice didn’t say why.
The cryptic message set her mind spinning. She called other parents. What in the world was going on?
She spotted a Facebook post from a friend. It linked to a photo and story that said Principal John McGill of Mount Carmel Elementary School had been arrested in a child sex sting.
“Are you pulling your kid out?” her friend asked.
Gingerly, she broached the subject with her first-grader, Lanya.
“Did anybody touch your body?”
“No.”
Those gut-churning conversations didn’t stop at Mount Carmel, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found in talking to parents and visiting several Douglas County schools. McGill had worked for seven years at Mount Carmel, and had served three years before that as principal at Lithia Springs Elementary.
Kids who passed under his leadership are now in several high schools. Shock and upset blew through hallways of those schools, and, in the upper grades, bubbled up in class discussions where students questioned what could drive a person to such desires and how the man depicted in the arrest warrant could be so different from the man they thought they knew.
“He gave me money when I needed it for lunch, and for a field trip,” said Kentavious Beckham, a freshman at Lithia Springs High School, who attended the town’s elementary school when McGill was principal there.
District officials brought in counselors at Mount Carmel, but they have not questioned students about whether they were harmed or held meetings at which parents might ask questions.
Gordon Pritz, the Douglas County school superintendent, said the principal underwent the legally required background checks during his tenure, and his file contained no indication of inappropriate behavior. (The AJC obtained a limited amount of records from his personnel file through the open records law, and found no problems.)
“We’ve never had any complaints,” Pritz said. “All of us were shocked.”
He said any additional communication with parents will come through the interim principal at the school.
“I don’t know how she’ll address it, but I wouldn’t suggest we’ll keep bringing this up with parents. We’re moving forward,” he said.
He believes parents are satisfied with the district’s handling of the issue.
“I have not received any phone calls of concern or emails of concern, which to me is a strong indicator that we’re doing a good job of communicating with them,” he said.
But Buchenen, for one, is disillusioned. She said she attended Mount Carmel, and she was thrilled that her daughter would, too. News that the principal was now accused of exploiting children left her angry, at McGill and the school system.
“I felt the system failed us,” she said. “Someone should have been aware.”
McGill, suspended since his arrest, was one of 14 people arrested over a four-day period beginning Feb. 26 in an undercover investigation by GBI’s Child Exploitation and Computer Crimes Unit. The arrest warrant said he responded to a Craigslist ad by an officer posing as a mother “seeking someone for her teenage daughter.”
McGill, 56, made contact with the undercover officer through email and over the phone, telling her he had “taught other girls” and he would “go slow,” the warrant said. He is charged with computer or electronic pornography and child exploitation, a felony. On Tuesday, a DeKalb County judge set a $50,000 bond and ordered McGill to stay off the Internet and avoid non-related minors. He was released on bond the following day.
His attorney, Mac Pilgrim, said McGill would plead not guilty. McGill is not a pedophile and presented no threat to children, he said.
“Was what he was doing against the vows of his marriage? Possibly yes. But it may not necessarily be illegal,” Pilgrim said.
The school system is in a difficult position in that it needs to communicate with parents but probably can’t say much due to legal liability issues, said John Zauner, executive director of the Georgia School Superintendents Association. He suggested the district hold meetings with parents at the school.
“I don’t think you can ignore it,” he said. “If you don’t fill in the blanks, somebody else is, and it’s not real good.”
Law enforcement — not the schools — should determine whether any students were victims, said John Adams, a former police officer and head of Educators First, a teacher advocacy group in Cobb County.
Superintendent Pritz said he has had limited interaction with the GBI, which asked him only to secure McGill’s computer. The district does not have possession of his district-issued computer tablet.
As for parents seeking to make sure their children were not victimized, they should tread gingerly, said Nancy Chandler of the Georgia Center for Child Advocacy, which conducts forensic interviews with child abuse victims.
She said parents should mention there’s been a lot of news about the school this week, without going into detail, and then ask whether anyone has ever made them do anything that made them really uncomfortable. Any more than that could invite false accusations, she said.
The school kids at Mount Carmel are also upset about what’s happened, even if some don’t understand it fully.
Kiyon Williams, a second-grader, asked his mom why a grown man would want to sleep with girls. He didn’t understand the actual accusations. But his mother, Keziah Jenkins, said he did say something that bothered her.
“I don’t want to grow up to be a principal,” the boy told her. “I don’t want to go to jail.”
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